'Killer' means good, not ...

OK, look, never mind the name. Killer Salsa really is safe to eat. Really.

The Gardnerville company, concerned that the salmonella scare might have consumers thinking twice about a Mexican food made with generous amounts of tomato and jalepeno pepper, faxed out word last week that their products will not harm consumers.

"Killer" in this case means really, really good. Even now, the literal meaning has no truth to it. They've never used "those" tomatoes or peppers in their salsa.

A little over 1,000 people nationwide have been sickened by fresh tomatoes and/or jalepeno peppers since early June. Health officials haven't been able to identify any tomatoes with the salmonella strain blamed for the illnesses, although they found some on a jalepeno pepper. The problem is with fresh tomatoes and peppers, if that's even what made a tiny fraction of our population sick.

Killer Salsa owner Fran Pritchard pointed out that her company uses canned tomato and pickled jalepeno, and adds fresh onion, cilantro and other spices to their salsa that has been sold locally to restaurants and grocery stores for 15 years without any problems.

She said you can e-mail her at fran@killersalsa.com or call her at 781-1523 if you have any concerns. And remember to keep the products refrigerated after opening.

Care for troops

The Minden office of Country Insurance and Financial Services is collecting letters and items for care packages to send along to military personnel serving in Iraq.

Agents Rhonda Moore and Sean Marler, along with production assistant Sandy Hannah, reported that they are working with local contacts at Army 194 MP Co. and Marine MWSS 274 units to distribute these packages to military people serving far from home through Any Soldier Inc.

They will accept nonperishable food items, toiletries, books, CDs, magazines and newspapers from now to Christmas.

They'll buy military exchange calling cards if you prefer to donate cash.

They are located at 1664 Highway 395, Suite 104, in Minden. Their phone number is 782-8363.

You might even be able to safely include a jar or two of that Killer Salsa.

The hesitation would be the glass container, not the contents themselves, which I can tell you from personal experience are very, very good.

OK, an introduction

In my business, ideas aren't so much invented as stolen. And so it goes with this new column.

I've long admired the "Business Scene" column in my first paper, the Feather River Bulletin, in Quincy, a couple of hours north of here. Publisher Mike Taborski had already been writing his chatty compilation of goings on in Plumas County's business community for years by the time I signed on as rookie reporter in 1985, a wildland firefighter literally fresh out of the woods.

The job changed my life. Mike managed to refrain from letting me go in those first few months when I could barely type and learned the job the hardest way possible. I made every mistake a reporter could possibly make.

He pulled me out of the woods again a couple of years later when he took me on as editor of Feather Publishing's six weekly papers in Plumas and Lassen counties, no doubt with a deep breath and a long prayer. He plucked me from a backcountry Santa Barbara lake caretaker job I'd taken after leaving the Bulletin to jump out of airplanes on the same bum knee that had made me a reporter. Of course, just about the first thing that happened was the knee blew out - speaking of learning the hard way. Now here I am, learning a brand new role in the usual Rogers' way. Mike's still the publisher and now owner with his wife, Kari, of Feather Publishing. Recently I picked up a copy of the paper where it all began for me.

There was the ol' column, "Business Scene." Just as conversational, informative and, well, fun as it was when I worked there. I'd been thinking about what was wrong with modern newspapers in general and why I loved the humble little community papers so much more - both reading them and working at them.

But little touches like "Business Scene" just might matter even more. This really is where papers develop their personality, that ineffable quality the large operations pretty much professionalized out of their oh-so-important pages.

Sorry to ramble on so long here, but Mike is one of those rare people you and I run across who change our whole course of life. So I wanted to pay him proper respects, you know?

That and steal his column as my own.

Send your bit of business news about new offerings, open houses, expansions, moves, promotions and other changes, along with observations, quotes and questions to check out to drogers@recordourier.com or call Publisher Don Rogers at 782-5121.