After learning that the Riverside County Board of Supervisors had discussed a new ordinance to regulate short-term rentals, the local Idyllwild Association of Realtors created a committee of four to review how this action might affect the local rental market, according to Marge Muir, one of the committee members. In an initial vote, the board…
Editor: So, Gary’s Deli is permanently closed. What’s the fuss about? Get your sandwich or whatever somewhere else now. Life goes on. Stop there, my friend, and you really don’t know this town. Go ahead — skate along the surface of goods and services and it’s clear you don’t feel the beat of the heart…
Jack and I packed to head out on an annual trip to San Francisco for the California Press Foundation’s Winter Meeting last Wednesday. We planned to fly from Ontario and take along our oldest grandchild, a new tradition when they reach age 13. Jack finished delivering the papers just as I heard of a mass…
On Nov. 19, the Idyllwild Community Center sponsored my presentation at its Speakers Series at Silver Pines Lodge. The topic was the motion-sensitive cameras I’ve placed around Idyllwild and that I wrote about in a previous installment of “Journal From the James” (April 9, 2015). The presentation was well attended and I enjoyed letting the…
During the month of November the Hemet Station of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department said several incidents were reported to authorities of a potential phone scam/fraud. The unknown suspects are targeting mainly the elderly with threats of arrest if they do not send money to pay for a warrant or a failure to appear. Since…
Idyllwild local Stacey Grant avoided a head-on collision with a motorcyclist on Sunday, Dec. 6. Grant was driving her 2011 silver Subaru Outback west on Highway 74 around 11:00 a.m. just after the last turnout near the bottom of the Hill on the Hemet side. Grant noted she had slowed as cars ahead of her…
Both the Town Baker and the Kingdom Hall of the Jehovah’s Witnesses experienced attempted break-ins on the same night, with the same basic modus operandi. Paul Amick, co-owner of the Town Baker, reported that he received a call from his alarm service at 12:30 a.m. Sunday that his alarm had been activated. Amick reported that…
On Tuesday, Dec. 8, Riverside County 3rd District Supervisor Chuck Washington asked his board colleagues to approve the use of Community Development Improvement Funds to help the Soroptimists International of Idyllwild. The Idyllwild Soroptimists is the beneficiary of $1,000. Washington’s memo said the funds would be used for the “Save the Sequoia” project. A water…
Town Hall will reopen as the primary venue for county-managed community recreation, Scott Bangle, Riverside County Regional Park and Open-Space District parks director and general manager, confirmed Wednesday, Dec. 3. In the Town Crier edition of Nov. 19, we reported the closure of Town Hall. A notice had been posted on the door stating, “Preliminary…
The double entendre of Oscar Wilde’s title “The Importance of Being Earnest” deftly sends up the conventions and snobbery of the final years of the Victorian Era when the British Empire was at its height. An outsider by birth, the Irishman Wilde was nevertheless accepted by the British upper class. They loved his wit, his…
