Sweet Sunshine, Spectacular Snow

On the passes coming into Tahoe are 15-foot snow walls.

The mountains are plastered with white.

It doesn't get better for wintertime play.

Grab your boards and c'mon up the mountain!

Heavenly as seen from Meyers

Snow Beats iPhone For Kids And Families

Most people think of Tahoe winter as a place of world-famous ski resorts.

But when you drive up Highway 50, you see hundreds of people stopped along the way. They park on the shoulder and take their kids up the forested slopes. They find a place to have more fun than many or most skiers at the resorts. Look close, and you'll see that not one kid is on their phone!

What a great way to show kids that there is more to life than social media!

Library = Church

For writers, walking into a library is like walking into church. The stuff inside the building is sacred, and the stuff one carries out is all about wisdom and guidance and thought provocation and a connection to something more important than our prosaic lives.

I've given talks at several dozen libraries in Northern California and Northern Nevada. I gave two more this last week, Colusa, CA and Lincoln, CA. Those libraries reinforced once again the simple fact that a library is the cultural center of its community. And the people who frequent libraries are remarkable, highly educated, and intensely interested in the larger world of ideas. Just to have a dozen or a hundred people turn off the TV and go to their local library for an event speaks volumes about their priorities. (And, of course, when people come to hear an author speak it is hugely gratifying to that author!)

If you haven't visited your local library in awhile, plan to go soon. You may be surprised. Even in a world where you can get lots of information from Google, your library offers uncountable resources.

My hat is off to libraries. A writer's church.

13 Feet Of Snow In One Storm??!!!

As I write this, we are getting a really serious storm.  No surprise there. We often get really serious storms. But when I checked the National Weather Service forecast, I saw verbiage I've never seen before.
"Localized amounts up to 13 feet."
Yikes, Yowser, and Holy Cow.

The next paragraphs are from the NWS website:
"...WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 4 PM PST TUESDAY... Heavy snow occurring. Travel will be very difficult to impossible, especially today and Monday. Tree branches could fall as well. Total snow accumulations of 5 to 10 feet expected, with localized amounts up to 13 feet. Winds gusting as high as 50 mph Sunday afternoon into Monday with gusts to 100 mph over ridges. A period of blizzard conditions is possible Sunday night into Tuesday morning."

You pretty much won't see forecasts like that anywhere else. I guess Y'all better plan your ski trips to Tahoe.