Smith Vineyard is gearing up for the opening of the Smith Vineyard Tasting Room at 142 Mill Street in downtown Grass Valley. Grand opening is scheduled for the weekend of May 1 and 2, an event that will celebrate the latest incarnation of a popular community gathering place.

The renovation process has been a journey through history for owners Gary and Chris Smith, who purchased the building in October 2009—and sometimes for those watching the progress from the sidewalk. Although evidence of a fire suggests that some of the place’s history has been lost, records indicate the building was constructed in 1871, when Ulysses S. Grant was president.

From 1910 through the 1930s, the business went through several identities revolving around cigars, tobacco, and pool playing. This brings us to Prohibition, the period in US history when sale and consumption of alcohol were illegal. The Smiths discovered a hidden stairway at the back door leading to a hidden room behind a false wall, possibly a “speakeasy,” where alcohol was imbibed in secret.

In 1947 it became Bunce’s Place, a gathering spot where the town’s merchants went after work.

The Smith family’s winemaking tradition began in 1987 with Gary’s father, Dr. Wayne Smith, and his three sons. As Smith Vineyard’s second generation, Gary and Chris continue the fine art of winemaking and vineyard tending. The family business is now three generations strong, as Gary and Chris , with their own three sons, handcraft small lots of classic varietals such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, Primitivo, and Chardonnay.

Community history will be showcased at the Smith Vineyard Tasting Room. Work included peeling back the linoleum to reveal the original Douglas fir floor and rediscovering the original brick walls under layers of paneling, wallpaper, and plaster. The footrail on both the inside and al fresco bars is salvaged track from the Narrow Gauge Railroad that ran from Colfax to Grass Valley from 1876 to 1942.

The Smiths are creating a shadow box to display artifacts discovered during renovation, including dice, poker chips, old coins, an old pipe, tobacco tins, a 5 of hearts card, old bottles, a billy club made from the end of a pool stick, and two newspapers dated 1898 and 1902.

Visiting Smith Vineyard Tasting Room will be an experience for all the senses. Live musicians, including acoustic guitarists Ty and Eye, will provide atmosphere; rotating exhibits will feature works by local artists, beginning with Debra Fike. A fireplace in a cozy corner will be a draw in the cooler months, while two televisions display a slide show of the Smith Vineyard, the winemaking process, and pictures of local events. A retail space will offer Smith Vineyard wines as well as t-shirts and other logo items.

The Tasting Room will open in time for the Downtown Grass Valley Car Show on April 24, with Grand Opening the weekend of May 1 and 2.

The Smiths hope the new tasting room will draw both locals and tourists into the area’s emerging agriculture scene. “We like being part of the downtown community,” says Chris Smith. While the passing of Bunce’s Place may trigger some nostalgia in the community, the spirit lives on, and Smith Vineyard Tasting Room is sure to become the new “place to be.”

Smith Vineyard Tasting Room is located at 142 Mill Street, Grass Valley, Calif. Hours will vary according to season, with summer hours in place for Grand Opening: weekdays noon to 6:00 p.m.; weekends noon to 7:00. Saturdays will feature wine by the glass and appetizers by local chefs. For more information, visit http://smithvineyard.com.

The nation’s number-one floor restorer, long featured on a major home shopping network, is now poised to dominate the online floor care niche. Pro Shot® Floor Restorer, so familiar to television viewers, is also well known to catalog shoppers, whose loyalty has insured its inclusion in several mail-order catalogs for more than ten consecutive years. With more shoppers now relying on the Internet to find the products they trust, Pro Shot® Corporation is launching its business into cyberspace.

Pro Shot® Floor Restorer has earned its reputation as the highest quality, yet affordable, industrial-strength floor care product on the market, consistently rating five-star reviews from Amazon buyers. It restores a floor’s shine, fills scratches, and protects it from black heel marks and spills. Homeowners are opting not to attempt expensive, time-consuming, potentially damaging floor refinishing projects, and often avoid replacing a floor altogether.

Pro Shot® Floor Restorer proves to be a remarkably versatile product, suitable for all types of floors from hardwood, laminate, and bamboo, to vinyl and linoleum, to tile, concrete, stone, and terrazzo. The website features photos of various flooring samples undergoing drastic improvement as a result of product use. Pro Shot® is UL-listed for slip resistance, and it contains no petroleum, suspected of being harmful to the environment as well as to humans and animals. Users report no offensive fumes or “chemical” smell.

Pro Shot® is being used successfully not only in homes, but in hospitals, a huge orphanage, US Military facilities, shopping malls, hotels, airports, schools and universities, and other high-traffic venues; and, perhaps the ultimate compliment, on a flooring company’s display room floor.

Interestingly, Pro Shot’s biggest competitors emerged after its effectiveness became well established. Yet Pro Shot® remains unrivaled in consumer praise as well as customer service; a 24-hour number is listed on each bottle, so help and advice are always available. With so many savvy consumers turning to the Internet to find their favorite products, establishing an online presence was a logical next step for Pro Shot® Corporation.

“You don’t have to put a lot of elbow grease into it,” says a satisfied customer named Kari in Madison, Wis. “It makes it look like you spent a lot of time cleaning your home, but you didn’t. I’m very, very pleased with the results—it’s like night and day. I’m putting it on everything!”

Pro Shot® also offers a cabinet restorer and has other products in development. Several sizes are available for a range of residential and commercial applications. Website visitors can register for a message series providing up-to-date information about floor care; the company also offers partnership opportunities for distributors and affiliate marketers. Interested persons should visit the company website at http://www.proshotcorporation.com.

GreenSmart bags area’s first green certification

GreenSmart, a Grass Valley bag maker, is the first business in Western Nevada County to be “green certified” by Keep the Sierra Green, a new program that recognizes and certifies businesses in the Sierra Nevada area that practice sustainable ecological and economic methods.

Keep the Sierra Green is a regional effort similar to organizations in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other locales designed to encourage businesses to develop green business practices. Companies choosing to become certified in the Central Sierra Nevada region of California, east of Sacramento, answer a series of questions about their business practices, which are then certified by Keep the Sierra Green. The purpose of Keep the Sierra Green is to induce businesses within the region to adopt business practices that will improve the region’s resource utilization, like waste reduction or water usage.

“This local recognition provides our customers and our community with additional awareness of the depth of our company’s commitment,” says President Tom Larsen. “Being first is completely consistent with our leadership position in most everything we do.”

A leader in the green industry, GreenSmart uses recycled PET plastic bottles to create their exclusive “Bottles 2 Bags” collection. PET bottles, the type that contain water and other beverages, are among the biggest environmental disasters today. In the US alone, 230 bottles per person end up in landfills each year; when crushed, they would fill California’s Rose Bowl Stadium every two weeks. Made from petroleum, they never decompose, becoming land and water pollution—not only disastrous but completely unnecessary, when they can be recycled into polyester fabrics with looks and durability equal to their “virgin” counterparts. Each yard of finished fabric removes about 18 16-ounce bottles from the waste stream and conserves 10,000 BTUs—enough power to light a 17-watt compact fluorescent lightbulb for 15 hours.

GreenSmart is a global brand of bags and cases made from eco-friendly materials. Their laptop bags, briefcases, and other items are sold nationwide through college bookstores and luggage and specialty stores, as well as found at numerous e-tailers online. Interested consumers can learn how GreenSmart’s products are better for the planet by visiting www.GreenSmart.biz.

Larsen, a San Francisco Bay Area native, grew up during an era of increasing environmental awareness. After earning a BS in Conservation of Natural Resources from UC Berkeley, he worked in the energy management industry while California was introducing trend-setting standards for energy consumption. This laid the foundation for GreenSmart’s philosophy that the cumulative effect of small efforts can have significant impact on the planet.

Vice President Debbie Williams credits her outdoorsy youth and California’s drought of the early 1970s for her appreciation of resource conservation, while her personal experience with asthma and allergies prompted her to explore ways to keep her environment toxin-free.

GreenSmart, based in Grass Valley, Calif., has been making bags and accessories since 1995. Under the name Shoreline, they initially made the products by the same methods as other suppliers, switching to eco-conscious materials in 2006 and introducing nontoxic, neoprene-alternative Neogreene in 2009.

Grass Valley, Calif.—An Alta Sierra family’s new business has taken on the challenge of helping poverty-stricken Haiti return to her former glory. Haiti, once "the Pearl of the Antilles," is now widely recognized as the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. The owners of Bon-Bagay.com--"bon bagay" means "it’s a good thing" in Haitian Creole--think that can and should be changed.

They plan to help Haitians create an income stream by marketing their unique brand of folk art to the world. Their efforts blend education, ministry, and business to accomplish that goal.

The brains behind the venture are an entrepreneurial trio of mom and two daughters. Noelle Dodd, a college art major, visited Haiti earlier this year with a church group and "came home both inspired and frustrated, feeling nearly powerless to change what I had seen or even to describe it to anyone who had not been there. And what I saw was an eyeblink of what the people of Haiti struggle with every day," she says.

Haiti is seen by the rest of the world as an unstable, uninviting, and non-business-friendly place. Yet it was not always that way; Haiti once actually led the world in coffee and sugar production and made many a French owner of a Haitian plantation the envy of his European friends.

"I knew I had to do something," Noelle says. When she returned home, bearing stories, pictures, and gifts, her mom, copywriter and Internet marketer Lisa J. Lehr, had a "lightbulb moment."

"These people make wonderful things," says Lisa. "They have skills. They have the time, the inspiration, the motivation to do this kind of work. What they might not have are, first, the capital to get started, and, second, a market for their goods."

That's where this new Internet-based venture comes in. As Noelle, her mom, and younger sister Natalie, who also hopes to visit Haiti soon, brainstormed how to fill this gap, www.Bon-Bagay.com was born. Their mission statement says, in part, "We are guided by Biblical principles of caring for those in need, as well as business principles of 'teaching a man to fish.'" The Internet, they explain, provides a huge "virtual" marketplace where skilled Haitians can show their goods to the world.

Immediate plans include selling Haiti-themed items designed and created by the owners and Haiti-made artwork bought wholesale from Haitians at prices higher than they're accustomed to receiving from the occasional visitor. Future plans for Bon-Bagay.com may include offering food items and natural cosmetics, and eventually providing micro-loans to those who have skills but need help purchasing equipment and supplies to get their businesses off the ground.

Bon-Bagay.com's owners immediately began building a network of people who travel to Haiti or know someone who lives there, to establish a regular supply of saleable Haitian goods. They are in the process of acquiring an inventory of original Haitian artwork they are excited to show to potential buyers. In the meantime, Haiti-themed jewelry, greeting cards, and t-shirts are available.

Visitors to the site can shop or simply learn about Haiti. New content is being added all the time, and readers can fill in their names and e-mail addresses to receive informational messages about Haiti.

The web address is www.Bon-Bagay.com, and contact information is provided at the site.

On Saturday, May 1, from 1:00 to 4:00, the Nevada County Animal Shelter will host a Pet Adoptathon. The Adoptathon is a nationwide event sponsored by the North Shore Animal League.

Activities will include a bake sale, prize drawings, treats for everyone (humans and pets), dog trainers on site, consultants to help you select the right pet for you, music, and a dog "wedding." The community is encouraged to come and help reach the shelter's goal of placing all of the animals. "We want to find a home for every single one of our wonderful animals," says volunteer coordinator C.W. "So come on out to the shelter and have some fun and adopt a great new family member."

The shelter is located at 14647 McCourtney Road, Grass Valley, near the county dump. For more information, call S.L. at xxx-xxxx or C.W. at xxx-xxxx, or go to www.petadoptathon.com.

Longtime RN Stands up Against Health Insurance Industry, Reveals Lifesaving Information

In the new e-book The Advocate, author Chris Landrum, RN, reveals valuable insider information about protecting our health. The essence of this e-book's message is that our health care is no longer determined by doctors, but by insurance companies--and that we must take our wellbeing into our own hands if we want to avoid becoming victims of "the bottom line." (For more information, visit [URL].)

We've all heard the horror stories--misdiagnoses, amputation of the wrong body parts, needless deaths. The statistics quoted in this e-book are shocking: for example, "adults fail to receive recommended health care nearly half the time," according to the Rand Corporation in a report published June 25, 2003.

The author is a Registered Nurse of 13 years, with experience in both a hospital setting and home care. While mincing no words about the insurance industry, she expresses a high degree of respect for doctors. "Most doctors are highly skilled, caring professionals," she says. "They are not the bad guys, but they are limited by what the insurance companies will allow them to do."

Ms. Landrum acknowledges that this report will not make her popular with everyone--the insurance companies don't want to be portrayed as heartless and greedy. "It could cost me my license," she says. She knowingly takes that risk in order to get this potentially life-saving information to those who need it.

Among the tactics she suggests are how to obtain and interpret your medical records; how to make documentation work for you; how to get coverage for costly procedures your HMO may deny; and many others.

Award-Winning Singer Cherie Adams Tells About Living "The Sweet Life" at Women’s Event

Cherie Adams, singer, songwriter, and speaker, formerly of the music group Avalon, will appear at the Women’s Fall Faith Lift at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Waterville. This special event takes place Saturday, November 3, 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

An American Music Award winner, two-time Grammy nominee, two-time Dove award winner, star of two gold records and 11 number-one hits while touring as a member of the Christian music group Avalon, Cherie has performed all over the world. She has sold millions of records and appeared with such well-known artists as Martina McBride, Ce-Ce Winans, Aaron Neville, and John Tesh. Hidden behind that glamorous and exciting life, however, was a time of shattering loss and complete brokenness. "I know what it is to be broken and hurting, and I know the hopelessness associated with that," she says. "There was a time when I didn’t think I could live another day."

Cherie knew she needed to tell her story; she decided to leave Avalon and move on to the next chapter in her ministry. After years of living what most would consider the "sweet life," Cherie realized she had a greater calling. She and her husband and manager, Kevin Adams, started their own record company, Dolce Vita Entertainment, and recorded Cherie’s first solo offering, "The Sweet Life." She now sings and shares her story at churches and women’s conferences.

"Cherie is multi-gifted," says author and "Matlock" actress Nancy Stafford. "She has an amazing voice, a wonderful testimony, and a hysterical presentation! She will touch your heart, minister to your soul, and make you laugh out loud. She is authentic and real, and God uses her in a powerful way."

Faith Evangelical Free Church is located at 250 Kennedy Memorial Drive in Waterville, Maine.

Tickets are $22 per person; pre-registration includes a bag lunch. To register, call....

Two Roseville writers have recently completed an uplifting new book about raising boys. Jamie C. Miller and Jennifer Basye Sander, with six sons between them and a total of more than two dozen books to their credit, now present The Miracle of Sons: Celebrating the Boys in Our Lives. In this, the latest book in their "Miracle" series, we find the contributions of fifty people, including some local writers.

"It was an affirming experience to be a part of this project," says Lisa J. Lehr, of Alta Sierra, who wrote a story for the section entitled "The Journey." "We parents of boys are kind of a special group of people, and no one outside of this group really has a clue as to what this job is all about. Joining with other moms (and a few dads) in making this book a reality has renewed my confidence in being the parent of a boy, and I hope it will do the same for all who read it."

The Miracle of Sons (Perigee Trade Paperbacks, $13.95) is available at The Book Seller and Odyssey Books in Grass Valley.

Lisa J. Lehr, a Grass Valley-area writer, has been selected for inclusion in Who's Who in America 2005. She specializes in personal history.

"As far as I know, I'm the only writer in the area doing this kind of work," says Ms. Lehr, an affiliate with Turning Memories into Memoirs (tm), headquartered in Maine. "A client recently told me she was prepared to work with a writer in Reno, until she found me."

Ms. Lehr also writes for businesses, and is completing coursework to expand into corporate communications and marketing.

In recognition that September is the designated month for many reading- and writing-related activities--including "Be Kind to Editors and Writers," "Read a New Book," "Library Card Sign-up," and "International Literacy" month--she is offering a discount to all new clients who sign up for any services during the month of September.

Ms. Lehr has taught "Writing an Autobiography" for Sierra Emeritus College and is available to speak to your club or organization about personal history writing. You may contact her at xxx-xxxx or view her website.