Idyllwild Town Crier

The Idyllwild Fire Protection District Commission unanimously raised its ambulance fees 5 percent at the May 28 meeting, meaning rates have grown about 25 percent since 2010. While no analysis of the fire department’s costs for 2012-13 was presented, both Commissioner Dr. Charles “Chip” Schelly and Fire Chief Patrick Reitz explained that IFPD rates are “lower than any other agency....

County Service Area charges At the May 21 Riverside County Board of Supervisors’ meeting, a public hearing was set for June 25 for comments on the possible increase in County Service Area charges for fiscal year 2013-14. On the Hill, the CSA 36 (Idyllwild) rate would remain the same at $35 per parcel. The CSA 38 (Pine Cove) parcel rates...

After beginning the 2013 season on the PGA Tour with six consecutive cuts made, Brendan Steele seems to have hit a flat spot. The native Idyllwilder has now missed the cut in four straight tournaments, including the recent Colonial in Irving, Texas, and last week’s Memorial in Dublin, Ohio. A current problem appears to be proximity to the hole on...

Saturday, June 8 will be a fee-free day at all national forests, in celebration of an annual event to encourage healthy, active outdoor fun. The U.S. Forest Service will not collect use fees that day. The Forest Service offers fee-free four times a year. The first such fee-free period in 2013 was Martin Luther King Jr. Day. National Get Outdoors...

As he did last year, plein air artist Rich Stergulz concludes the Idyllwild Community Recreation Council’s popular speaker series. Plein air, for the uninitiated, is a movement in fine art that gained prominence in the late 19th Century when painting outdoors in natural light became a signature of French impressionist painters Claude Monet, Camille Picaroon and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Light...

The Art Alliance of Idyllwild’s 2012 Artist of the Year, Kathy Harmon-Luber, is exhibiting her collages for one day only during Idyllwild Massage’s Open House – from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, June 15. Idyllwild Massage owner Karen Georg says, “Some of Kathy’s collages are colorful and whimsical, while others are very peaceful ... which is the kind...

Last week, my wife and I attended the CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) class held at the Fire Department and led by Captain Mark LaMont. The concept of CERT, which is a FEMA program, is to have available a trained citizen corp of first responders in a disaster, recognizing that professional responders may be stretched too thin to help...

Thanks for printing a photo of the Idyllwild March Against Monsanto — one of thousands across the country on May 25. The caption under the photo, however, was curious: the phrase “designed to feed a growing population” could have come straight out of a Monsanto publicity hand-out. Let’s be clear. Monsanto’s goal is to make money. It is not a charity,...

If there were a Shangri-La, the dreamed-of mystical country of James Hilton’s “Lost Horizon,” it would probably be Bhutan. Public radio reporter Lisa Napoli moved there in 2007 to help develop a national radio station to engage Bhutanese youth in the country’s transition from absolute to constitutional monarchy. Bhutan, a remote Himalayan kingdom, has only been open to visitors...