Who’s your friend? what it’s like to befriend a racist See Arts&Culture, page 16
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RN&R exploRes the Role of food iN ouR lives
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Where to eat
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Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review. Getting a family of six to agree on where to dine out can be as a futile as trying to boo at a Bruce Springsteen concert. One kid won’t eat anything spicy. One kid hates all food—except spicy stuff. One kid hates cheese and has a bunch of made-up-sounding allergies. And one kid, the pickiest of all, will only drink milk straight from his mother’s teat. That’s literally the only thing we can get this kid to eat. He’s 2 months old. Mama refuses to eat anywhere with an animatronic bear. I’ve been banned from the mall following an unfortunate-but-hilarious incident during my teens. Plus, I’ve been known to launch into eyeroll-inducing lectures about supporting small, local businesses whenever one of the kids suggests some corporate chain. Still, we’ve found a nice rotation of local spots to take the brood. Our favorites include El Adobe (great grub that appeals to kids and adults, and they secretly have the best French fries in town), Sup (“Every dish you get has a cookie!” exclaimed Josephine, age 11), Laughing Planet (it’s basically a vegetarian cafeteria, but the kids like the kids menu, smoothies and play table), Bertha Miranda’s (kids eat free on Tuesdays, and there are arcade games), and Wild Garlic Pizza & Pub (Pizza! Board games! Beer!). (It’s been brought to my attention that the analogy in the lede of this column might need some explaining. See, Bruce Springsteen is an American singer-songwriter. He’s very popular—I’m surprised you haven’t heard of him. But, then again, he’s also pretty old. Anyway, his fans like to scream “BRUUUUUUUCE” at the top of their lungs during concerts. To the uninitiated, it basically sounds like booing, so if you were to actually boo, people would just assume you were ecstatic.) Anyway. Hope you enjoy the family dining-themed feature package that starts on page 8.
Another NFL football season has come to an end and not without controversy. I suppose the most enduring thing was the many players who continued to participate in Colin Kaepernick’s thoughtful and courageous kneeling (what we do in church) during the national anthem. Because of this Kaepernick lost more money than most of us make in a lifetime. Their protest was not disrespectful to the flag or the anthem but by using their First Amendment rights, they were hoping to highlight the catastrophic treatment of dark skinned Americans by some police departments. This is the very essence of the First Amendment, but conservatives do not seem to understand this. They just want to send young people off to war to fight for “freedom.” Well, speaking your mind is freedom. Conservatives, do not be afraid of people who think. Don McKechnie Sparks
—Brad Bynum bradb@ ne wsrev i ew . com
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Anti-speech liberals Re “Another year, another march” (Left Foot Forward, Jan. 25): I physically experienced what people mean when they say “My heart sank” as I read Sheila Leslie’s column. I attended last year’s march and was in awe as I looked back from near the front of the march, to see what seemed an endless sea of humanity, many of whom I knew personally from the Reno Justice Coalition, Occupy Reno, RISE, Planned Parenthood orgs on the UNR campus, Progressive Democrats of America, Indivisible, and PLAN. But in autumn, months after last year’s Women’s March, Peter C., a student at UNR, was caught on videotape marching in the “Unite the Right” demonstration in Charlottesville, and petitions were circulated and signed, demanding that the 20-yearold be expelled from UNR and that his
Our Mission: To publish great newspapers that are successful and enduring. To create a quality work environment that encourages employees to grow professionally while respecting personal welfare. To have a positive impact on our communities and make them better places to live. Editor Brad Bynum News Editor Dennis Myers Special Projects Editor Jeri Chadwell Arts Editor Kris Vagner Calendar Editor Kelley Lang Contributors Amy Alkon, Matt Bieker, Bob Grimm, Andrea Heerdt, Shaun Hunter, Holly
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FebRuaRy 15, 2018 | Vol. 24, ISSue 01
employment at UNR be terminated. People I had once respected were demanding that Peter C. be punished for exercising the same right to free speech that I had, with an arrogant sense of entitlement, celebrated when I had attended the Women’s March. I literally couldn’t believe some of the ignorant justifications for revoking civil rights, many of them coming from UNR professors and educators nationwide. More than once, different educated individuals who really should have known better suggested that the civil right of free speech should be re-examined and redefined, as though it was possible to surgically remove the rights of those we disagree with, without endangering our own free speech and other civil rights. As a woman who is not of the dominating class racially, financially or in physical ability, whose rights have never been on firm ground, I now look at liberals and wonder when I’m going to take a position they disagree with and see them forget everything I thought they stood for. “How could I march with them” I wondered as I read “Another Year, Another March.” How could I have marched with them last year, when I was blissfully naïve and thought I knew what we were about. Progressives have more in common with Donald Trump than they think, including a tendency to climb onto the bandwagon, offer knee-jerk reactions instead of careful analysis and well-thought-through, complex conclusions, and an apparent desire to turn back the clock. R.A. Drew Reno
Move on up They walked in the door, wondering, worried and because we were teachers, we welcomed them. Eager, bright, polite, trying, they often jumped ahead of the English-fluent mainstreamer citizen student, blessed with what’s sometimes taken for granted. And they learned, studied, behaved, respected our laws, our diversity and practiced politeness.
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They learned our language. We did not ask. We taught. We encouraged. We cared. Twenty thousand Dreamers are teachers, fluent in languages, content and application. Educated, trained, motivated, I monitored them in my student-teacher supervisory capacity, and they excelled. They are teachers of science, math, language arts, music, social sciences, from the top of their classes. They are Dreamers who are teaching dreamers—your children and my grandchildren. Trained, practiced and invested in a future which is American, they have given back. We cannot lose what we have nurtured. J Viselli Reno
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by JERI CHADWELL
What food do you hate? askeD aT The geneRaToR, 1240 icehouse ave., sPaRks Jeff Rocke Metal fabricator
What food do I hate? Food that doesn’t taste good. I love all foods. I’m Filipino, so I’ve eaten like balut. You know what balut is, right? It’s fermented duck egg. So it’s between six and eight weeks old. It’s a hatchling. It’s all there. It’s the whole body, but everything is soft. It’s not as bad as you think.
T weeTeR TunsTall Artist
Fast food—all of the chemicals, all of the bad stuff. I just can’t do it anymore.
Mike nsane Professional traveler
The public’s government in exile Republicans are getting their wish. Government seems increasingly dysfunctional, with the result that people are tuning D.C. out more and more. But that has not led to the conservative golden age the GOP had sought. People are just turning to other means of accomplishing their goals. Going around D.C. is in vogue. Environmentalist Bill McKibben points out that neither Republican Donald Trump nor Democrat Joe Kennedy, in their assessments of the state of the union, mentioned climate change. If D.C. is that out of touch with public needs, there’s no way to rely on it. So the nation must turn to the federal courts and state and local governments. Trump and the feds may not be abiding by the Paris Accord, but cities, states and companies are. They don’t need the federal government to set an enlightened environmental policy. They’re doing it themselves. McKibben: “Even if Democrats manage to take back the House and Senate in the midterm elections, they wouldn’t be able to get meaningful legislation past Trump—and there’s nothing much to suggest they’d try very hard. … [W]e dare not wait for Washington to return to sanity. And happily, we don’t have to. The strategy that’s been evolving for U.S. climate action—and for action in many other parts of the planet—bypasses the central governments as much as possible. That’s because the oil industry is strongest in national capitols—that’s where its money is most toxically powerful. But if frontal attack is therefore hard, its flanks are wide open.” The pack of lies about marijuana that locked this wonder drug away from the public for eight decades
has been beaten down by facts, and public votes have slid authority out from under the federal government and handed it to the states.Even here in Nevada, a Republican governor went his own way on the Affordable Care Act, putting the needs of Nevada patients above those of GOP dogma. The federal courts kept pace when public attitudes on our gay brothers and sisters started changing. In D.C., where direct mail fundraising depended on demonizing unpopular groups, the GOP was taken aback when conservative attacks on gays prompted a wave of years of courageous coming out. Families and friends found the faces of gays not as difficult to encounter as they had thought. While congressmembers still championed bigotry, attitudes evolved. The public and the courts leaped over federal politicians and changed history. To be sure, the doctrine of preemption in the U.S. Constitution—giving primacy to federal over state law— gives the fed authority to seize back its control on some of these initiatives, such as marijuana and climate change. San Francisco Department of the Environment Director Deborah Raphael calls preemption “California’s worst nightmare.” But in the dynamics of politics, federal politicians would pay quite a price with sweeping interferences of local action. We can’t wait to see Republicans making war on government at the local level. So let Republicans in D.C. go on with their gridlock strategy, and let Democrats go on unable to cope with the Republicans. Life and policymaking go on without them. Ω
Industrialized meat. ... I consider myself an environmentalist and a humanitarian. For me to claim to be those things, I can’t support industrial meat. If a friend is a good hunter, and he goes and drops a hog or a deer, I’ll have that.
aMbRosia Danu Activist
Sugar and processed foods. Sugar is basically like crack and highly addictive. And processed foods are engineered for us to be addicted to. They go hand-in-hand, and they’re not the best. They’re empty of nutritional value.
Megan PuckeT T Police officer
Sushi—I hate the taste of seaweed.
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by SHEILA LESLIE
The rich are with us always GOP congressional leaders are almost as tone deaf as our president who continues to tweet misspelled nonsense and outrageous comments almost every day, calling Democrats “treasonous” because they didn’t clap enough for him during his State of the Union address, notwithstanding his propensity to clap enthusiastically for himself at every perceived applause line. Nevadans were stunned recently to read about Trump’s order to the military to get ready to test a nuclear weapon at the Nevada Test Site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, for “political purposes,” as a way to intimidate our enemies. But the GOP wasn’t a bit sidetracked by this frightening pronouncement. They continue to merrily support Trump despite all of his scandals and ridiculous, embarrassing and dangerous behavior, because he’s enriching their personal fortunes and keeping the wealthy donor class happy enough to open their checkbooks. They don’t really care how the
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rest of us are faring. In fact, Speaker Paul Ryan is ready to move on to the urgent task of cutting Medicare, Medicaid and welfare benefits, suddenly concerned about the nation’s growing deficit. One recent tweet by Ryan revealed the mindset of the GOP so clearly, he was forced to quickly delete it after a national backlash due to its condescending and insulting nature. In reaction to an Associated Press story that some workers were starting to see wage increases or bonuses from their employers who were delighted by December’s tax cuts for the wealthy, Ryan tweeted: “A secretary at a public high school in Lancaster, Pa., said she was pleasantly surprised her pay went up $1.50 a week … she said [that] will more than cover her Costco membership for the year.” They think we’re too stupid to realize the inequity involved when the selfproclaimed “job creators” are rewarded with millions of dollars they don’t really need while workers get a tax cut the size
of a Costco membership. But we know a scam when we see one. According to a new report from Oxfam, “Reward Work, Not Wealth,” 82 percent of the wealth that was created in 2017 was claimed by the top one percent of the income bracket, producing a new billionaire every other day. An executive from Oxfam America, Paul O’Brien, says the new wealth isn’t trickling down to the working class, telling reporters, “It’s not a good time to be a worker on the wrong end of the economic chain. What we essentially have are market economies where the markets aren’t being regulated and the rules are essentially being rigged by those who can afford to do so, and that’s where you see extreme wealth emerging and people getting stuck.” Oxfam says governments need to find ways to “incentivize business structures that are more beneficial to workers” such as cooperatives, and also find a way to address the inequality faced
by women caretakers, who last year provided $10 trillion in unpaid work by caring for someone else. But these types of concerns don’t matter to the GOP, led by a man with no conscience and no sense of what it means to balance a checkbook or find a way to work for enough wages to cover child care and the rent. As they relax regulations on banks and payday loan thieves while they look for more ways to monetize our public lands and raise the price of admission to our national parks to unaffordable amounts, you can rest assured that Sen. Heller and Rep. Amodei think they’ve worked a miracle for you on the tax cuts. They think you’ll be satisfied with $1.50 a week crumbs while the rich steal millions from our treasury that must be replaced by cutting public programs. Maybe it’s time you let them know you’re not a fool. Ω
by Brendan Trainor
In what we trust? America is now a low-trust society. Only about a third of Americans trust the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency. Fewer than a quarter trust the federal government, and Congress scores even lower. #ReleasetheMemo was to shock our faith in our nation’s institutions. Yawn. OK, the FISA court is either corrupt or incompetent. Who could have imagined that a secret court where only one side gets to present its arguments would ever be corrupted? Wow! You mean a political party “weaponized” the FBI to interfere in our sacred democratic processes? I am shocked, shocked to hear there is gambling in Casablanca. The FBI has been weaponized against our sacred democracy since it was created in 1908. Numerous presidents have secretly authorized the FBI to open mail, draw up lists of political opponents, perform black bag break ins, and tap phones.
J. Edgar Hoover kept his secret dossiers and wrote notes to Martin Luther King telling him to commit suicide. Hoover began his career leading the Palmer raids that rounded up Eugene Debs and other opponents of World War I. In the 1960s, the CoIntelPro system kept the United States safe by spying on peaceniks. Now, they brag about the semi-literate Middle Eastern immigrants they entrap into manufactured terrorist plots. The guardians on Capitol Hill tell us we need to restore faith in the FBI and our institutions. But who will guard the guardians? Why must we restore faith in the integrity of the FBI? For how long? To what end? The FBI is a progressive institution. The late University of Nevada, Las Vegas Professor Murray Rothbard wrote that progressivism is a mix of pietism and technocracy. Pietism is the belief that enlightened individuals should use the state’s police power to improve society, while technocracy is rule by disinterested
experts who always act in the public good. In practice progressive policies have emphasized the police power of the state at the expense of individual liberties. Progressive monopoly state institutions crowd out free markets and consumer choice. The civil service they created led to the deep state and unaccountable, unelected permanent bureaucracies. Agency heads like James Comey and James Clapper and Lois Lerner fall into a long line of not so disinterested experts who act for the good of party and power, the public be damned. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) points out that a couple of days before #ReleasetheMemo, the politicians said the FISA court was absolutely trustworthy when they voted to extend section 702. Now, suddenly, it is compromised. The “intelligence community” is the backbone of the Deep State. But politicians only care when they are spied on and couldn’t care less when ordinary citizens are the targets.
Former CIA agent and Blaze radio host Buck Sexton (a name out of a Tom Clancy spy novel) promotes the tired, old bad-apple excuse. Only this time the rotten fruit is at the top of the barrel, not the bottom. The bad apple excuse would have us believe all we need are a new top banana or two, and the ship of state is righted again, only to sail off another cliff the next time the other party is elected. The problem with a low-trust society is that it scares people into demanding even more government. The enemy you know is better than the enemy you don’t. People have been laboring under too much government, confused by the media talking heads and listening to demagogues who promise relief. Maybe Amazon’s Jeff Bezos can do a better job than the politicians have to fix health care. Maybe its time to look elsewhere after so much government failure. Ω
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by Dennis Myers
Drugging the system In a Jan. 25 report for the Nevada Independent, journalist Megan Messerly tracked “campaign contributions” from the pharmaceutical industry since the Nevada Legislature enacted legislation giving consumers more information on their insulin pricing (“Healthy legislature,” RN&R, June 15, 2017). The measure, vetoed by Gov. Brian Sandoval, was subsequently attached to another bill and passed that way. The measure requires insulin makers that raise prices to disclose information about their costs and any rebates; requires drugmaker sales reps to register with the state and provide information on their activities; requires nonprofits to disclose any subsidies from drug companies or other health industry sources, and numerous other provisions. The strict legislation so alarmed the industry that a dozen lobbyists were dumped into Nevada to do their thing. Business Insider reported, “Nevada is one of 23 states with proposed legislation to take on the rising cost of prescription drugs. But unlike others that focus on drug prices in a general sense, the hybrid bill focuses on two specific groups of drugs that are used to treat diabetes: insulin and biguanides. It’s the latest milestone in government actions at the local, state, and national levels that attempt to change the way we spend money on prescription drugs.” Messerly reports that after the bill passed, the industry pulled its campaign money from all Democrats but four—and those four all hold leadership posts and are thus difficult to ignore. “Republicans received 67 percent of the industry’s contributions, while the remaining 32 percent went toward funding the industry’s opposition … to the insulin pricing transparency bill sponsored by Democratic Sen. Yvanna Cancela in 2017,” Messerly reported. In the previous year, she wrote, 19 Democrats received campaign funds.
Anti-women recAlls stuDieD Court hearings last week focused on whether voters can remove their signatures from recall petitions once they sign them. It was an issue in hearings on whether or not two of three Republican attempts to recall three female state senators from office should go ahead. The GOP is trying to win a Senate majority with recalls instead of regular elections. The recall attempts against Clark County Sens. Joyce Woodhouse and Nicole Cannizzaro narrowly qualified for the ballot, and Democrats have rounded up more than enough requests from voters asking to have their votes removed from the recall petitions. The court will decide what to do with those requests. Nevada District Judge Jerry Wiese did not say when he will rule. The recall of Woodhouse and Cannizzaro—together with another pending recall attempt against Sen. Patricia Farley—could give the GOP a Senate majority it did not win in the last regular election. The county says the three recalls would cost about $153,000.
—Dennis Myers
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There is a glacier at Wheeler Peak, mostly underground and of an unknown depth. PHOTO/NATIONAL PARKS SERVICE
Clues Glacier could tell about Nevada’s future it may surprise some residents of this desert state that is often afflicted with drought that there is a glacier in the Great Basin. It is located at the base of Wheeler Peak. And it’s feeling the heat. Wheeler Peak, located in Great Basin National Park, reaches 13,063 feet, and the glacier is at about 11,500 feet. Much of the surrounding terrain— including the horn-like peak, nearby valleys and some lakes—was likely shaped by the glacier. As a tourist attraction, the glacier is frustrating. It is not visible, and some people have drawn from this that it no longer exists. “It’s gone,” said a hiker to the Las Vegas Sun in 2015. Compared with the beautiful photos people are accustomed to seeing of ice glaciers, Wheeler Peak’s rock glacier can’t be photographed because it is essentially underground.
Scott Reinemann, geography professor at Ohio’s Miami University, and his colleagues are trying to get a better fix on the size of the glacier. It’s usually described vaguely as around 120,000 square feet in size “The research group I am a part of has been researching in the Great Basin National Park for over a decade now,” he said. “We have more recently taken interest in mapping the area the rock glacier in the park covers.” The National Park Service reports,, “The small glacier below Wheeler Peak has been incorrectly called an ice field. According to definition, an ice field is a vast body of ice, the union of several alpine glaciers. Ice fields are found today in Alaska and British Columbia. It has correctly been referred to as a rock glacier, however. A rock glacier is a lobe of angular boulders and
cobbles that resembles an alpine glacier in outline and in its slow downslope movement. They are found in mountain ranges throughout the world. Inside a rock glacier, ice fills the spaces between the blocks. By freezing, thawing, and sagging, the ice works with gravity to provide the force that moves the rock glacier.” The Wheeler Peak glacier is unusually far south for the western hemisphere. In addition to trying to measure the glacier, scientists have been using lakes to identify trends, and they think they can show a warming trend that began about four decades ago. In a 2011 article for Park Science, Reinemann and five colleagues (Nathan A. Patrick, Gretchen M. Baker, David F. Porinchu, Bryan G. Mark, Jason E. Box) wrote, “Alpine and subalpine aquatic ecosystems are highly susceptible to direct and indirect effects of climate change, making them ideal study sites. We recovered a sediment core spanning the last 7,000 years from Stella Lake and a core of the last 100 years from Baker Lake in Great Basin National Park, Nevada, in 2005 and 2007. We examined the cores for subfossil chironomid (Insecta: Diptera: Chironomidae; i.e., midge) remains. The midge communities in the lakes underwent little compositional change through much of the 20th century; however, after 1980 a rapid lakespecific faunal turnover was observed.” If the jargon is getting in the way, they are saying that around 1980 the insect life in the lakes began changing, with mites called midges that were adapted to cold dying out and warmeradapted types moving in. The isolation and relatively unknown beauty of Great Basin National Park is an aid to the scientists, giving them a study setting that is largely undisturbed. Not always, though. This is from the same article, with emphasis added: “We installed a micrologger network to record hourly observations of surface air temperature and humidity. ... The Lascar sensor network spans the full park elevation range (1,639–3,982 m or 5,377–13,063 ft) and includes sensors located at Baker (3,214 m/10,545 ft), Brown (2,976 m/9,764 ft), Stella (3,123 m/10,247 ft), and Teresa (3,132 m/10,276 ft) lakes. We analyzed data from autumn 2006 to
autumn 2010. Data recovery has been limited of the region. Since January 1, snowpack at the uppermost elevation at Wheeler Peak percentages have continued a gradual (3,982 m/13,063 ft) because of vandalism to decline and are now in the realm of recent the sensor. Throughout the park, annual air drought years like 2012, 2014 and 2015. temperature ranges are extreme, approaching In the Lake Tahoe, Truckee, Carson and 50°C (90°F). The temperature ranges at the Walker basins, current snow amounts are lakes were 40°C (72°F) or more. We find slightly better than 2015, while for the that temperature and humidity decrease with Humboldt Basin and Eastern Nevada there increasing elevation.” is less snow than 2015. SNOTEL data indiThere may be another value to the cates that the Upper Humboldt has its study of the glacier. Communities lowest February 1 snowpack since in the Great Basin rely on these stations were installed in snow melt for their water 1979. The Lower Humboldt “It is hard to supplies, and finding out is fourth lowest and Eastern classify the degree more about melt at the Nevada is third lowest. glacier can provide more Based on history, other of the melt at the rock information on the impliyears with snowpacks this glacier.” cations of climate change low on February 1 were for growth. While no one unable to recover to normal Scott Reinemann can draw broad conclusions April 1 levels.” Scientist yet, the glacier study may be As for rainfall, “Monthly useful down the road. precipitation in January was “At this point, it is hard to 50-70 percent of average across classify the degree of the melt at the most of northern Nevada and the eastrock glacier, as it is not your typical type of ern Sierra basins. As of February 1, water glacier you see in images of Alaska and the year to date precipitation since October 1 is Sierra Nevada of California,” Reinemann below average for Nevada ranging from 44 said. “A rock glacier is by definition the percent in eastern Nevada to 83 percent in last remnants of a once much larger glacier, the Owyhee River Basin. This is the driest and at this site that was probably a glacier start to a water year in eastern Nevada since thousands of years ago.” SNOTEL sites were installed in 1981. The The Natural Resources Conservation Lake Tahoe, Truckee, Carson and Walker Service this week issued its latest report on basins have received between 63-80 percent snowpack: “February snowpack percentages of average, while the Humboldt basin has are 26-50 percent of median across most had 74 percent.” Ω
Sticker trip
We hope they make it back to Oklahoma safely. PHOTO/DENNIS MYERS
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food for your
brood
Family guide February
2018 I
t doesn’t matter if you’re a clean-eating vegan or the type who thinks a balanced diet is holding a cookie in each hand, food is a central part of life for everyone. It’s a topic with unlimited potential to spark interesting conversations, and not just about what we eat. We wanted to explore the roles that food plays in our lives, so we set out to ask some questions—ones that went beyond, “Hey, what you guys want for lunch?” What we came up with were several stories that each look at a different aspect of the roles food plays in our lives. From Jessica Santina, we have a story examining how parents can set their kids up from a young age to
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be lifelong healthy eaters. Kelsey Fitzgerald wanted to look deeper into food insecurity in the Truckee Meadows and ended up finding On Common Ground, a non-profit working to get food to people who often don’t even have kitchens. Matt Bieker spoke with a woman who decided to maintain her vegan diet throughout her pregnancy, despite some naysayers who questioned whether or not it was healthy. And for my part, I talked with a human development specialist about all the things kids can learn by getting into the kitchen—from language skills to math skills—and how parents can get the ball rolling. —Jeri Chadwell
family guide continued on page 10
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family guide PH
continued from page 8
OT O/ JER
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What's cooking?
by Jeri Chadwell
j e ri c @ne w s re v i e w . c o m
your kids can learn a lot in the kitchen
P
eople say children are like little sponges, learning by observing and absorbing everything that takes place around them. A lot of what they learn is, of course, from the people who raise them—and these days the internet is full of parenting blogs and websites with tips on how to teach kids pretty much everything, from showing empathy to using scissors. Teaching kids to cook is among the popular topics on sites like these, and with a quick search you can find stories ranging from “the first five recipes you need to teach your kids” to “how to get your children to love healthy food.” But what if the thought of involving your little ones in preparing meals sounds to you like a recipe for creating your own kind of Hell’s Kitchen? You may not be ready to teach your kids how to deglaze, flambé or truss. You may not have those skills yourself. But even if learning to cook is still a life goal for you, for your children, cooking can be an opportunity to learn. Kids who spend time in the kitchen can learn all sorts of things, from math and language skills to fine motor and social skills. And these are things you don’t need to be master chef to teach them.
Food For thought Dr. Lydia DeFlorio is an assistant professor of human development and family studies at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her research focuses on cognitive and emotional development in children, and she’s particularly interested in how children develop early math skills. According to DeFlorio, hers and others’ research has revealed that kids’ math skills upon kindergarten entry are more than an indicator of how well they’ll perform in that subject throughout school. “They are actually one of the best predictors of not only children’s math throughout school, but also a better predictor of their literacy skills, than even early literacy is,” she said. The takeaway for parents, according to DeFlorio, is to realize that a lot of crucial early learning happens at home, before kids are even old enough to start school. But, thankfully, the skills they need to succeed are pretty basic, she said—which brings us back to the kitchen, a place DeFlorio sees as an OK starting point. Now, if the thought of mixing math and meal making has ruined your appetite, relax. As both an academic and a mother, DeFlorio has a few simple pieces of advice to make things easy for you and worthwhile for your kids.
Questionable behavior According to DeFlorio, an excellent way to teach young children is through asking them questions. “Think of your child as the little scientist in the kitchen,” she said. “Not that you let them go blow things up or do whatever, but posing questions about everything, and then not giving them the answer, just kind of helping them just enough to figure out the answer.” It’s easy to see how this method of asking questions might work for teaching early math skills. You could ask your kid to figure out how many ingredients are needed for a recipe or which one is required in the greatest amount. But that’s really only the beginning. Even something as simple as making cookies offers the opportunity for more. “There are ways to pepper questions in that can support a whole range of school readiness,” DeFlorio said. “‘How does it make you feel when you eat the cookies? Happy? Why does it make us feel like that?’ There’s an emotional piece in there, right?” According to DeFlorio, baking cookies could even be a chance to help your child pick up literacy skills. “Early literacy, yes, it’s about letters and whatever, and you can read recipes and whatnot. You can identify the word ‘egg’ or something,” she said. “That’s the more obvious stuff, but a lot of literacy skill is kind of being able to take in information, being told a story, being given information, being able to process that, remember it, make sense of it, and use it. That’s a huge piece of literacy, so following the instructions, and understanding why we’re using the instructions, having discussions. It doesn’t just have to be crack the egg and pour it in. ‘What does the egg do? Why do we put egg in the cookie batter? What’s the purpose?’” The best part, DeFlorio said, is that you don’t have to be a mommy blogger with specific activities and learning goals in mind for your child. “Whether I’m a mom who plans out some elaborate activity that I’m going sit down and do with my child or we’re just baking cookies because that’s what we feel like doing today—in either situation, intent doesn’t really matter as much as the language that’s being used.”
think of your child as the little scientist in the kitchen
10 | RN&R | 02.15.18
Dr. Lydia DeFlorio is an assistant professor of human development and family studies at the University of Nevada, Reno. She says language-rich interactions are the key to learning experiences for kids, both in and out of the kitchen.
balancing acts DeFlorio’s other piece of advice for parents who are considering ways to use their kitchen as a classroom is also simple: Make sure you’re balancing your own sanity with your desire to provide learning experiences for your kid. “For me, I don’t know that I would ever have either of my kids in the kitchen on a school night helping me try to prepare dinner,” she said. “We’re pressed for time already. It’s nuts. I’m much more likely to say, ‘You know what? I bought the ingredients to make cookies. On Saturday, we’re going to make cookies.’” But just because the kids aren’t actually making dinner alongside her, that doesn’t mean there’s no opportunity to learn. “They could set table,” she suggested. “There’s that one-to-one correspondence. ‘How many people are eating? How many forks do we need? … Can you please go to the cabinet and get 10 napkins,’ or whatever. There are a lot of things that can happen just as part of that daily routine that still.” It’s all pretty simple, but, DeFlorio said, in the end, it’s a situation where practice on the part of the parent makes perfect. “I am a mom,” she said. “I know a lot about this stuff. But I am a mom, and I’m tired at the end of the day. And I have to make dinner and get homework done and baths. Everything needs to happen. Those interactions I’m having with my kids aren’t always intentional. I have enough practice that I probably do infuse a lot of that stuff during the day, but in order for it to be there, you have to practice it enough for it to become routine and just part of the way you talk to children.” Ω
by Jessica santina
what not to eat O
HOw tO set tHe table early fOr kids’ HealtHy eating
ne in five children in the U.S. is obese. When you hear a statistic like this, you think, “Well, not my kid.” After all, you’re buying the organic juice, right? Sure, you may indulge in fast food occasionally, but you’re careful not to overdo it. It turns out those “occasional” indulgences are more rule than exception. Recently, a shocking study entitled “The First 1,000 Days: Nourishing America’s Future” reported that the number one “vegetable” eaten by America’s 1-year-olds is the French fry. According to the study, the first 1,000 days of a child’s life—from conception through the second birthday—set the table for his or her brain development. A malnourished brain can lead to lower IQ and chronic medical problems and even affect future school and job success. Yet many parents still fall prey to misunderstanding when it comes to feeding their kids.
Feeding misconceptions For years, the general belief was that there were many things children shouldn’t eat during their first year—nuts, eggs and seafood among them. That simply isn’t true. “For the most part, once toddlers are eating solid food, they can really eat anything as long as it’s not a choking hazard,” said Vanessa Slots, MD, a pediatrician and chief of the General Pediatrics department at Renown Children’s Hospital. “Hot dogs, nuts, large meats, popcorn … they can all be choking hazards. It’s best to start with small foods that can easily be squished in fingers, even soft meats. But really, they can eat anything and everything.” The only thing parents with infants should avoid is honey. As they grow, their bodies develop the proper acid makeup to deal with the botulism toxin in honey, but babies don’t yet have this. Anything containing honey should be avoided until age 1. But even nut products, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, may be introduced as early as 6 months of age and may even help ward off allergies.
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“But my toddler won’t eat vegetables,” many parents argue. This is a cop-out, according Slots. “Picky eating can start as early as 6 or 8 months,” Slots said. “The thing I tell parents is that tastes constantly change, so if we aren’t exposing taste buds to things, we won’t have wideranging palates.” This explains why your toddler might spend a day eating her weight in green beans and the next day won’t touch one. “Exposure could take 20 to 50 times,” Slots said. “Try it at least 50 times before you say your child will or won’t like it. Think about how long that really is.” And exposure, she added, doesn’t necessarily mean forcing beans down her throat. It means the beans, and other vegetables, are always on offer. They’re seen, smelled and touched. And even if you’re hiding the veggies—pureed cauliflower in the mac and cheese, for instance—don’t make them a secret. “You can easily puree vegetables and hide them. You want that nutritionally,” Slots said. “But we need them to realize they’re having the vegetable at some point. So if you puree that cauliflower, you should also have some on the plate. They need to be exposed to it.” Parents need to practice the eating habits they want to see in their kids. “If parents weren’t raised on vegetables, their kids won’t eat them,” explained Karen Fisher, nutritionist with Nutrition Connection in South Reno. “In some segments of the population, they don’t even think to include vegetables in their diets, whereas a generation ago there was more emphasis on a balanced meal.” Fisher cautioned people to avoid the trap of making separate meals for kids. “My slant on picky eaters is that it’s an opportunity for kids to be in control,” Fisher said. “If Mom and Dad are making different meals for them, that’s power. So I suggest going with, ‘This is what we’re serving tonight. After this, the kitchen is closed. We will not be pulling out the chicken nuggets or mac and cheese.’ They won’t miss too many meals before they’ll eventually choke it down. And they’ll eventually come around to enjoying more variety.” Ω
family guide continued on page 12
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7000 Dandini Blvd • Reno, NV 89512 775-674-7515 • www.tmcc.edu/childcare 02.15.18 | RN&R | 11
fAmily guide
continued from page 11
by Matt BieKer
Veg out
MA
TT
BIE KER
12 | RN&R | 02.15.18
PH
O/
W
hen Kellijane prescott became pregnant last year, her OBGYN laughed as he listed all the foods she would need to abstain from as a soon-to-be mother; foods like sushi and raw eggs, or staples like deli meat and certain cheeses. “He was like, ‘I don’t even need to tell you this,’” Prescott said. “Everything that could put harm to you and your baby was not vegan.” Prescott has been vegan for the past 10 years. An outlier in her family of meat-eaters, she first experimented with the lifestyle change when she was 12, taking her doctor’s advice that cutting out processed foods might treat the debilitating irritable bowel syndrome and other issues she experienced at the time. She learned as much as she could about adopting a vegan diet from online sources and some of her teachers at school. Now 22, she says she’s experienced positive benefits from her diet that go beyond her initial medical problems. “That clean eating, though, you feel so much better,” said Prescott. “I’m more clear in the head. I have more energy. I used to have to use an inhaler for my asthma; I don’t even have to do that anymore. I don’t take allergy medication anymore. I’m never in pain anymore. I used to be on acid reflux medications and stuff. I got off of everything just so fast.”
Others marveled at the fact that she had put on any baby weight at all. “People [were] like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe how fat you are.’” Prescott said. “On the internet it was like every day. That was like a daily thing where a guy got so mad at me he told me he was going to eat my pug. People go that extreme.” Prescott meets the negativity with a kind of positive mindset that comes from her dietary choices, she said. She is currently enrolled in a program at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition and will receive her certification as a health coach in May. She says she wants to help vegans and non-vegans alike make healthier food choices. “I understand why people eat meat,” said Prescott. “It’s like the middleman. It’s easier. The animal eats those plants with the vitamins and nutrients that you need. I know that now, that all of that stuff comes from plants.” She says she’s uninterested in forcing her lifestyle on anyone else, even her own child, who she’ll introduce to meat when he’s slightly older. “I’m not going to force him to be vegan, and I’m not going to force him to eat like his dad either,” Prescott said. “I’m going to give him a choice, because I kind of wish I’d got a choice, you know?” Anyone considering a vegan lifestyle should speak to a nutritionist about their specific dietary needs, and numerous resources exist online for reference. Vegan or not, however, Prescott believes all mothers should focus on finding positivity in all forms.
OT
A locAl discusses her vegAn pregnAncy
While Prescott became vegan for medical purposes, learning about food production and nutrition sciences influenced her understanding of the ethical and political questions behind large-scale meat and dairy production. She now attributes her diet to environmental reasoning as well. “I started learning about animal agriculture and factory farming, and how 80 percent of the rainforest is cut down to be cattle farms,” Prescott said. “I’m just like, ‘Oh, my gosh, we just need to take a step backwards and stop eating meat because it’s destroying our planet.” When she learned she was pregnant, however, she agreed to go back to eating meat if it meant maintaining her weight goals and calorie intake to feed both herself and her baby. Throughout her nine months, however, she never felt it was necessary to eat anything non-vegan. “I didn’t crave it,” she said. “Everyone says you have these cravings. That’s all BS. It’s just an excuse to eat whatever you want.” She worried after she fainted several times early in her pregnancy due to low blood sugar, but her doctors informed her that this is common in pregnant women who have yet to adjust to consuming more calories. She quickly got used to eating every two hours. “I had lots of nuts handy, and I always was meal prepping because when you’re pregnant eating is your job, basically,” said Prescott. “Lots of smoothies, you know, and replacements for nutrients like spirulina in a smoothie for a good B12—that kind of algae that is in the ocean has a lot of those good B vitamins. And then doing hemp seeds and flax seeds for my Omega-3s and Omega-6s instead of eating fish.” Understanding nutrition and learning basic cooking techniques were essential to following her vegan diet, as this allowed her to find necessary nutrients in different plant-based sources, as well as prepare heavier meals like sautéed vegetables, sandwiches and soups. “I had to eat greens with every meal. That’s really important; dark, heavy greens because they have a lot of protein,” said Prescott. “Like, lots of broccoli, lots of spinach, lots of kale.” Aside from fruits and veggies, legumes and lentils also provided her with filling amounts of protein. But Prescott also cites meat substitute products–like the jackfruit tacos she made in her partner’s food truck last summer, and plant-based protein powders that are increasingly available as reliable alternatives. “I like to buy vegan roasts and some of the replacement meats,” said Prescott. “I love my vegan nuggets from Whole Foods, and they’re soy-free, non-GMO.” Choosing to remain vegan while pregnant concerned even some of her family members until her doctor assured her that she and her baby were in good health. Her son, Sterling, is now 2 months old and she believes his health speaks for itself. “He’s 75 percent above his weight and his height,’ Prescott said. “Like, he’s the size of a 4-month-old, and he’s just 2 months today. He can hold his head up, he can stand up, so I don’t care what people think.” The public perception that veganism causes malnutrition meant Prescott’s online posts about her vegan pregnancy occasionally drew criticism from commenters who accused her of starving her baby.
Kellijane Prescott holds 2-month-old Sterling, whom she says she’ll give the choice to be vegan or not when he’s older.
“Those nine months are crucial, and you don’t want to consume any negative energy and you don’t want to be around any negative people or anything,” said Prescott. “You just want to be in the happiest place you can be so that they, for the rest of their life, their little footprint is happy and positive.” Ω
fAmily guide continued on page 15
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02.15.18 | RN&R | 13
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14 | RN&R | 02.15.18
fAMily guiDe
continued from page 12
Food
chain by KelSey FitzGeRalD
Shannon Dobbs, president and co-founder of On Common Ground, is part of a team that aims to bring healthy, affordable food options to low income residents of the Reno area.
A non-profit AiMS to Solve reno’S fooD inSecurity WoeS
W
hen Shannon and Michelle Dobbs, former owners of Reno’s Five-Star Saloon and Rise Nightclub, decided to get out of the nightlife industry several years ago, they felt ready to channel their energy into a new direction. Now, as co-founders of a non-profit called On Common Ground, the Dobbses have found their cause—working to bring healthy and affordable food options to low-income families and individuals in the Reno area. The Dobbses, who coincidentally both hail from Albuquerque, New Mexico, met after moving to Reno. Shannon spent time in the military before becoming involved in the nightclub industry in Las Vegas and Reno, and Michelle’s background includes business management and program development. They first became aware of the problem that lack of access to healthy food poses to the local community during their time as downtown business owners. “When we were in downtown Reno doing work, we’d see people struggling,” Shannon said. “Our customers, our employees, everybody that we knew was struggling to try to make ends meet. They were trying to eat healthy and take care of themselves, and there just weren’t the resources available.” The Dobbses did a bit of research and learned that the problem with access to nutritious food extended far beyond the downtown area. According to the 2015-2017 Washoe County Community Health Needs Assessment, approximately 15 percent of the people in Washoe County—including more than 26,000 children—are considered “food insecure,” meaning that they lack access to the food they need to live an active and healthy life. In addition, downtown Reno and many of the surrounding areas are classified by interest groups as “food deserts,” or areas with low access to healthy food items such as the fresh produce that you would find in a normal grocery store. This problem is sometimes compounded by an abundance of cheap and unhealthy food choices from fast food establishments, gas stations and convenience stores. “Downtown Reno is the largest food desert in our area,” Shannon said. “About 69,000 people live down here, and a lot of them don’t have kitchens. A very large percentage of them don’t have transportation, which means they have to get on a bus or do something to get to the outskirts of the city to get to where the food is. That is a ridiculous amount of effort for people that are struggling to survive and that have limited time capabilities.” Initially, the Dobbses reached out to companies like Scolari’s or Trader Joe’s, to see if any were interested in putting a store into the building formerly occupied by the Rise Nightclub. They soon learned, however, that downtown Reno did not meet these companies’ minimum requirements for profitability. They then investigated the option of starting their own grocery store, inspired by a successful non-profit grocery located in Boston,
Massachusetts called the Daily Table. This idea, they realized, had merit. In 2016, the Dobbses founded On Common Ground, initially planning to focus their efforts on creating a non-profit grocery in downtown. With the aid of a board of directors, 13 interns from the University of Nevada, Reno, and more than 30 community volunteers, plans have expanded rapidly. At present, OCG is in the process of organizing a complex network of food security measures for Reno and the surrounding area. In addition to the non-profit grocery, which OCG plans to install in the building formerly occupied by Rise Nightclub on Sierra Street, they hope to operate two mobile markets (think grocery store meets food truck), which will transport food to outlying food desert areas. “This has been done a couple of times around the country already,” Shannon explained. “They take a shuttle bus and convert it into a grocery store on wheels, and send it out into areas of the community that don’t have grocery stores.” A food distribution warehouse, location still to-bedetermined, will serve as OCG’s primary food storage facility and processing plant. Here, it will also operate a food-preservation commercial kitchen, which will accept and process donations of food that would otherwise go to waste. Other plans include educational classes on cooking and nutrition, and a seasonal “produce fair,” similar to a non-profit farmer’s market, which will be held in a public location downtown. Community support, involvement and feedback, said Michelle, are key in all that they hope to accomplish. “The really neat thing about OCG is that it has to be community based,” Michelle said. “We cannot provide food in the food desert areas and have people select nutritious food unless we show them how to cook it, and unless we have food that matches people’s personal and cultural preferences.” For funding, OCG is seeking grants, as well as support from the local community. They have partnered with community organizations to hold fundraisers such as a fashion show at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Northern Nevada, and a “pay what you can” dinner at Moon Rabbit Café. On April 19, they will hold a five-chef cookoff, in which five local chefs will compete to cook the tastiest dish using several food pantry staples. In solidarity with those who do not have access to a kitchen, the recipes must also be modified for cooking with a crockpot, hot plate or steamer. There is still much to be done to bring OCG’s goals to fruition, but for Michelle, the issue of food security is something she connects with on a personal level. “I was a single mother for 14 years,” she said. “Making ends meet, working two jobs, going to school, struggling to find child care and feed my kids at the same time. The fact that one in four kids in Washoe County do not know where their next meal is coming from, that hits home.” Ω For more information on On Common Ground, visit their website: www.ocgreno.org or Facebook page: www.facebook. com/OCGReno.
02.15.18 | RN&R | 15
How to
befriend a
racist
? PHOTO/ERIC MARKS
16 | RN&R | 02.15.18
by Wade gainer
Because that’s one way to change someone’s mind
W
hen I was younger, I had a friend— we’ll call him Mark—who was raised by racist parents. This wasn’t uncommon, considering we grew up in Susanville, California. It’s a rural town with about 17,000 citizens, two prisons and 8,000 inmates. Most of the town’s impressions of black people were of prisoners, not of the black people who lived in Susanville. Mark didn’t think of himself as a racist. He just didn’t like black people who act like thugs—and he occasionally used the n-word. Mark didn’t avoid black people. But he did wonder why—since Martin Luther King Jr. had ended racism—black people were still complaining. He also knew that the reason black neighborhoods are “bad” is simply because we kill each other all of the time. And he was confident that if we didn’t act like “thugs,” cops would leave us alone. But we got along OK. And because our shared love of Magic: The Gathering was stronger than our differences, our friendship grew—and so did Mark. He came to see that the stories he heard and what he saw on television did not accurately represent black people in the real world. I believe that racism is either experienced first-hand or learned—passed down from our families and from the environment. If we become insulated in our worldviews and don’t take the time to share our lives and experiences with people of different
cultures, then we run the risk of developing a mindset that is rooted in racism. Having been bullied in grade school, spit on in high school, and not allowed to hang out with certain girls because their parents were racist, I learned at an early age that I had a few choices: Become bitter, and harbor the same hatred; ignore people with prejudices and pretend they don’t exist; or spend time with them and show a side of black people that isn’t dictated by negativity. I never had the desire to hate someone who hates a false idea of who I am, so I set out to help change my peers’ perceptions. How did I do it? I learned the delicate art of befriending the racist. Here’s how it works:
Pick a troPe, any troPe Whatever works best for you. Personally, I find that “Funny Black Guy” works flawlessly. No one wants to not be friends with the funny black guy. I always make sure to have a steady supply of “harmless race jokes.” Examples include, but are not limited to: “What do you mean, ‘You people?’” and, during group photos, “Make sure that camera has extra flash, because I’m dark as shit.” Any self-deprecating joke based on race works. The goal is to let your Mark know that you’re cool because you can joke about race. (For extra effect, pretend to be offended when he makes his first race joke, and then laugh.)
become “one of the good ones” Whenever race comes up in the news and your Mark asks you for your opinion, never engage directly. Deflect with “I don’t know, Mark. I try not to get too involved with that.” When he presses, follow up with, “I just try to do my best, Mark. Crazy black people keep acting up, and I’m just trying to show it’s not all of us.” You want your Mark to believe you’re non-confrontational. This part isn’t fun; it’s a necessary evil. And then, you wait. Continue doing this until you and your Mark have a semblance of trust built. This is the most frustrating part—and the most critical, because, after this part …
The real work begins
Mark didn’t think of himself as a racist.
Help your Mark see things from a new perspective. To help clarify, here is an exchange I had with Mark: “I just don’t understand why these black NFL players are disrespecting the flag by taking a knee—it’s bullshit,” Mark blurted, like he had been brooding over it and couldn’t contain it anymore. “I thought they were protesting like, police brutality or something,” I replied with feigned curiosity. “I don’t care what they’re protesting. It’s disrespectful to the troops.” “I mean, I guess. I always have the hardest time thinking of what I would do in a situation like that. Like, people should be able to protest things they believe in, but they should also stand for the anthem, you know? But they aren’t shutting down streets, or hurting anyone, either. I mean, it’s pretty much a peaceful protest.” “Yeah, but if they want to protest, they shouldn’t do it during the anthem.” “I’m with you on that. I think I saw something about how when they first protested, they were sitting. And then one of the players who’d served spoke with Kaepernick about how sitting was disrespectful, and they came up with taking a knee. I think it’s supposed to be symbolic of when someone is hurt or something.” “Huh, I didn’t know that.” “Yeah man, I thought that was pretty cool that Kaepernick took the time to try and get advice from someone who’s served. It’s kind of a hard choice though. How do you protest something without making someone angry, but still also deliver a message? It seems hard.” “I guess you have a point.” There are a few important things that took place here: I didn’t let my emotions match his, or even enter the conversation. I used phrases such as “I thought” and “I think” to express a neutral frame. You don’t want to get into an argument about facts. This is a conversation about feelings. When you strip everything
away, it’s about ideas. And, as rational as we like to believe we are, our ideas are often powered by our feels. I brought up what I would do. The more time Mark spent on what “they” are doing, the longer he could invoke a biased mindset. You can help humanize his mindset by framing it as yourself, someone he knows and cares about. I didn’t push him to agree with me. Mark will have to make the decision for himself. Show your Mark how someone could come to a different solution using the idea of ideas.
why iT works Mark holds the belief that one part makes a whole, and that a person’s race, gender or sexual orientation is a legitimate reason to treat them as inferior, so he has developed an ideology of bigotry. This is further compounded by his lack of time spent connecting with people who are different from him. By becoming “one of the good ones,” I got to show Mark that I’m not the exception. With time, he started to see that I’m much closer to being the rule. Our shared experiences can bring light to the darkness of ignorance. There is a good chance that your Mark isn’t a closeted Grand Dragon Wizard, but someone who stood idly by while the world progressed without him. It’s easy to write off the Marks of the world as racists, just because they haven’t changed with the times. As a person of color, I have the ability to show them the error of their ways by just being me. And for white people, you have the ability to guide the conversation into one of learning and shared experiences. Befriending the racist is a strategy that doesn’t work every time, but when it does, it becomes a foundation of tolerance and understanding that will live longer than you and me. Ω
He just didn’t like black people who act like thugs—
and he occasionally used the n-word.
Wade Gainer is a music producer and DJ who lives in Reno.
02.15.18 | RN&R | 17
by KriS Vagner
k r isv @ ne wsr e v ie w.c o m
The 2014 Mexican film Cantinflas will be shown during International Film Weekend in Carson City.
Screen time Carson International Film Weekend
$5 Off With Backstage Pass
Live entertainment tax of 9
18 | RN&R | 02.15.18
not included in ticket price.
When Ismael Garza was growing up in San Antonio in the 1950s, his mother would take him downtown to the Alameda, a Spanish-language movie theater, where the Mexican comic actor Cantinflas often had the audience roaring with laughter. “The man is an incredible comic—he’s been called the Mexican Charlie Chaplin,” said Garza, who now lives in Carson City and is on the selection committee for the International Film Weekend there. “In the Latino community, in the Latino world, Mexico and South America and Spain, Cantinflas is it,” Garza said. So, when he came across the 2014 biopic Cantinflas, he wanted it in this year’s lineup. He predicts it’ll appeal to speakers of Spanish and English alike. Garza’s pick sounded just right to festival committee chair Linda Bellegray. “We needed a comedy, and we have not done a Mexican film,” she said. The committee aims to show a mix of comedies, dramas and documentaries from as many regions of the world as possible. The now-annual event began after members of a church book club that Bellegray belonged to read a Brazilian novel, Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, and then watched the film version together. That screening quickly evolved into a small festival, which began in the church in 2014 and drew about 400-500 viewers. “It was a springboard into thinking, ‘We’re enjoying these foreign films and books—I bet the community will as well,’” said Bellegray. Her group connected with Friends of the Carson City Library, a non-profit through which it could secure grant funding, which has helped to keep the festival free
to attend. Screenings are now held in the Carson Community Center’s theater, which holds almost 800. This year’s films include Water—a 2005 movie from India that shows the world through the eyes of a widow who is only 8 years old—and the 2011 Norwegian thriller Headhunters, about which Rogert Ebert wrote, “I knew I was being manipulated and didn’t care. It was a pleasure to see how well it was being done.” The festival also screens independent films on two afternoons. “Over the years, we have had films submitted from as far away as from Iran and as close as UNR,” said Bellegray. This year’s independents include Reno filmmaker Gwen Clancy’s 1990 film on an early 1900s cowboy artist, The Man They Call Will James, and three films on youth homelessness made by journalism students and faculty from University of Nevada, Reno. Those films arose out of Our Town Reno, a collective effort to cover homelessness in Reno that was started in 2016 by instructor Nico Colombant and student Jose Olivares, an RN&R contributor. The Our Town Reno films can be easily viewed online, but Bellegray is pleased with the prospect of people assembling to see them in a theater. The shared experience of viewing films together is important to her, and because of that, her committee has also scheduled informal discussions after each feature film and an appearance by Janine Comoletti, president of Carson City PFLAG, who will talk about youth homelessness in the LGBTQ population. Ω
international Film Weekend takes place Feb. 15-17 at the Carson City Community Center, 850 e. Williams St., Carson City. Films screened on Feb.15 are Transilvania Frumoasa at 3 p.m., The Man They Call Will James at 3:30 p.m. and Water at 7 p.m. Feb. 16 screenings are This is Homelessness at 3 p.m., invisible girl at 3:30 p.m., Help at the Circle at 4:15 p.m. and Cantinflas at 7 p.m. On Feb. 17, Headhunters screens at 7 p.m. admission for all films is free. For information, email friendsinformation@att.net.
by BoB Grimm
b g ri m m @ne w s re v i e w . c o m
SHORT TAKES
1
“You may have a playroom, but Pee-wee Herman has a whole playhouse.”
Bound to torture I went to see Fifty Shades Freed, the third, supposedly final and treacherously fatal cinematic blow of the Fifty Shades franchise. Hoping to keep a low profile I saw it on a Sunday morning. I was, of course, the only single guy sitting in a dark theater with couples of varying ages, primed for groping and sloppy, in-theater fellatio. (Hey, we all know what happens at these damn Fifty Shades screenings!) So, this is the one where the protagonists Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) and Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) get married, creating an eternal bond for their patented strain of lovemaking that involves whips, handcuffs and shit dialogue. When I sat down to take this fart to the face, I was thinking, “Say, you know what I want with my miserable, dick-killing softcore porn? Give me some car chases and kidnapping drama!” Actually, I wasn’t really thinking that. I was thinking something more along the lines of, “Help me. Help me, please. I want to go home. I want to go home now.” I didn’t see Fifty Shades Darker, the Empire Strikes Back of the Fifty Shades trilogy. As I recall, I had a hangnail the week it came out, and my physician told me that extensive staring at Dornan’s naked ass and constantly changing facial hair would exacerbate it, so I took a pass. I did see the first one, Fifty Shades of Grey, an experience that had an adverse, lasting effect on my thyroid and circulatory system. Apparently, in that “I’m sure it was just scintillating” second chapter, some character named Jack Hyde (Eric Johnson) was stirring up crap. He returns in this movie all cardboard-cutout angry at Anastasia for whatever she did in part two. (Whatever that was, I’m sure it consisted of her droning in whiny, bored tones.) He follows her around, at one point orchestrating a car chase between Anastasia’s brand new Audi and a Dodge Durango. Who do you think won that race? While there is supposed to be a plot, Fifty Shades Freed is really just an assemblage of asinine,
soul-decimating moments that leave a bad taste in your entire body. Here’s a quick starter list of some of the things Fifty Shades Freed totally ruined for me: Seattle, Audis, Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed” (Dornan sits down at a piano to sing this in a true WTF moment), David Bowie’s “Young Americans” (I heard it playing while Anastasia and Christian were eating steak), steak, butt plugs (actually, kind of OK having this one ruined for me), Dodge Durangos, Aspen, women, men, Mickey Mouse (He’s on my watch face, which I was constantly checking), Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith (they are Dakota Johnson’s parents, and I’m holding them personally responsible.), the color red, sexy architects, sonograms, and the English language. The movie is set in Seattle. I wanted Mount Rainier—that gigantic, nasty looking, long-dormant volcano—to erupt. This franchise is selling a gazillion dollars in tickets. Surely, they could’ve spent an extra hundred million for a volcanic eruption sequence where Christian and Anastasia get buried in molten lava while playing with vibrators in their torture room. I would’ve upgraded my popcorn rating to a fair for that. The movie is directed by James Foley, who helmed such classics as At Close Range and, for Christ’s sake, Glengarry Glen Ross. Let’s put this in perspective, the guy directed the Alec Baldwin “Brass Balls” speech, and now he’s directing Seattle-based butt plug mayhem. Oh, wait, check that, he also directed Madonna’s “Who’s That Girl,” so the seeds of suck were planted in the late ’80s. The bastard has come full circle. Anastasia and Christian have a safe word, “red,” when things get out of hand in their little bondage palace nightmare. From now on, I will have a movie safe word. I think it shall be “jaws,” and I will repeat it aloud when I want a movie to stop. As for Fifty Shades Freed? “Jaws! … Jaws! … Jaws! … Oh, god, jaws! … Jaws!” Ω
Fifty Shades Freed
12345
The Cloverfield Paradox
Originally planned for an April theatrical release date, the third Cloverfield movie got itself a surprise release on Netflix immediately following the Super Bowl. While I’m a big fan of the first two installments in the Cloverfield series, J.J. Abrams and his Bad Robot production company have got to be kidding trying to call this a legitimate chapter in the Cloverfield universe. The Cloverfield Paradox was originally a project called God Particle, a standalone science fiction film directed by Julius Onah. Somewhere during production, Bad Robot decided to make it a Cloverfield film. How is it a Cloverfield film? A few short, badly constructed scenes shoehorned into the narrative, including a 10-second final shot that feels like a total cheat. They did this sort of last-minute tinkering when they made 10 Cloverfield Lane, and that resulted in a good movie. This one results in a muddled mess. The plot involves a space station trying to create a free power source to revitalize a struggling Earth. The crew (which includes Daniel Bruhl, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Ziyi Zhang and David Oyelowo) accidentally zap themselves into another dimension. While they struggle in the other dimension to find their way home, the dimension they left behind is dealing with a new problem. The events happening back on Earth might’ve made for a better movie, but the one we get in space is an Event Horizon rip-off. It’s no mystery why Bad Robot avoided a theatrical run for this. It stinks. (Available on Netflix.)
4
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool
Annette Bening is an amazing actress. Somehow, she failed to get an Oscar nomination for her bravura turn in 20th Century Women, and now she has been snubbed again for her beautiful, heartbreaking work as movie star Gloria Grahame in this moving film from director Paul McGuigan. Grahame’s later career was plagued with scandal, but you may know her from her roles in It’s a Wonderful Life and Oklahoma. Married four times and notorious for dating younger men, one of her last affairs involved actor Peter Turner (Jamie Bell), a man 30 years her junior, whose memoir this film is based upon. Grahame saw Turner in the final years of her life, when she was trying to keep her career alive doing theater in England. Diagnosed with cancer, her final years were confusing, tragic and sad, something the film does an effective job of depicting. Bening is convincing as Graham despite not looking much like her. She does just enough with her voice and mannerisms to convince you she’s Grahame without flat out impersonating her. Depicting the actress both before and after she’s sick, the movie basically calls for two kinds of performances, and she rocks both of them. Bell is terrific as the befuddled lover who must defy his lover’s wishes and call her family about the illness. This is another triumph for Bening. Someday, they will be watching a double feature of this with 20th Century Women, acknowledging that her work in those films is some of the more underrated, underappreciated work of this early 21st century.
4
Hostiles
Director Scott Cooper’s Hostiles is an uncompromising, brutal Western. Christian Bale turns in another spellbinder as Capt. Joseph J. Blocker. Joe, a quiet, tired, jaded soldier, is spending the closing days of his military career in 1892 capturing and imprisoning Native Americans. He has fought many battles, seen many atrocities and committed many of his own. When aging and terminally ill Cheyenne Chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) is granted freedom by the President of the United States, somebody who knows his dialect must be chosen to escort him and his family back to Montana. Cooper, who also wrote the screenplay, avoids sermonizing, and opts for a film that takes its sweet time delivering its message. The movie is far from predictable, and nobody in the cast is safe. That cast includes soldiers played by Timothee Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name and Lady Bird), Jesse Plemons (Breaking Bad) and impressive, relative unknown Jonathan Majors. Rory Cochrane (Dazed and Confused) is a true standout as a
longtime fellow soldier of Joe’s battling “the melancholia.” Rosamund Pike is excellent as a woman they pick up along the way, a devastated mother who has lost her entire family.
4
Phantom Thread
4
The Post
It seems the latest film from Paul Thomas Anderson finally did in actor Daniel Day-Lewis. One does get the sense that DayLewis tends to kick his own ass when he plays roles. A notorious method actor, he researched heavily for his role as a 1950s dressmaker and fashion maverick in Phantom Thread. Reynolds Woodcock (Day-Lewis, amazing yet again) runs a tight ship when it comes to his dressmaking business. He works and lives alongside his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville), along with the occasional muse. When his latest muse starts interrupting too much during breakfast, she’s dismissed, and Woodcock goes on the hunt. He finds a new muse in Alma (Vicky Krieps), a waitress he quickly asks out to dinner, and then back to his place. Rather than pouring some wine and getting to know her better, Woodcock immediately—and literally—puts Alma up on a pedestal and starts building a dress on her. Alma goes from enchanted to mildly bewildered by Woodcock’s actions, but she sticks around and eventually moves in. Alma is not the standard Woodcock muse in that she wants more of his time and wants him to slow down. A scene where Alma hatches a plan for a romantic dinner for two proves to be the best in the film and a turning point in the movie. In the dinner scene’s aftermath, Alma does something that carries the film into the sort of weird, bizarre territory we’ve come to expect in an Anderson film (not quite as wacky as frogs falling from the sky in Magnolia, but still ...).
Perhaps the most important journalistic battle in American history gets the Spielberg treatment in The Post, starring a stellar cast that includes Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks. The film explores the Washington Post’s decision to print the Pentagon Papers on Vietnam in 1971, a move that put the careers of people like paper owner Kay Graham (Streep) and editor Ben Bradlee (Hanks) in major jeopardy. Bradlee, who died in 2014, was a journalism giant. The movie starts in 1966 with Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys), a member of the State Department doing a study for Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (Bruce Greenwood), in South Vietnam. Embedded with American troops, Ellsberg sees all sorts of atrocities and is a firsthand witness to the growing failure of American participation in the Vietnam War. His forecast about the war’s outcome is bleak, but McNamara and President Johnson—and two presidents before him— share a rosier, false version with the American public where America is finding great success overseas. The supporting cast includes Bob Odenkirk and David Cross, the legendary TV comedians of Mr. Show. It’s a trip to see them on screen together in a Spielberg production. Tracy Letts, Bradley Whitford, Carrie Coon and Sarah Paulson round out the cast.
1
Winchester
Helen Mirren and Jason Clarke head a decent cast in what proves to be a ghost movie totally devoid of any real scares, personality or any real reason to sit down and watch it. The acting is terrible. The editing is sloppy, and the special effects are third rate. It’s all very surprising considering it was directed by Michael and Peter Spierig, brothers who put together the inventive science fiction thriller Predestination. Clarke plays Eric Price, a doctor addicted to drugs and alcohol. His wife died due to a self-inflicted gunshot wound via a Winchester rifle, a rifle he also took a bullet from but survived. (The script alludes to the notion that he was dead for three minutes before being brought back to life, so he might be able to see dead people.) Members of “the board” at the Winchester firearms company want Eric to evaluate the mental health of company owner Sarah Winchester (Mirren), hoping that the disgraced doctor will basically take their bribe, declare Sarah unfit to run her company, and strip her of company control.
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by Todd SouTh
rnrsweetdeals.newsreview.com
WEDNESDAY
FEBRUARY
A feast including tacos, carne asada fries, a chicken quesadilla, and a mula was top-notch.
Fat and happy Loosely translated, the Spanish word “gordito” means “little fat one” or “chubby.” Gorditos Tacos takes its moniker to heart with a straightforward menu of carbs, stuffed with meat and cheese. Your vegan, vegetarian and pescetarian friends will want to sit this one out. There are six classic meat preparations to choose from: cabeza (beef head), lengua (beef tongue), carne asada (grilled marinated beef steak), pollo asado (grilled marinated chicken), carnitas (slow braised pork) and al pastor (spicy, spit-roasted pork with pineapple). The meats are then served in one of six ways—as tacos, quesadillas, mulas, tortas, burritos or astride a big pile of fries. We began with cabeza, lengua, pollo and carnitas tacos ($2.50 each). I was a little surprised to see each with a pair of five-inch, yellow corn tortillas—a break from the three-inch, white corn variety commonly used for “street tacos.” The stronger yellow corn flavor definitely came through, a bit of a distraction but not a deal breaker. Crisped a bit on the grill, the tortillas were stuffed with meat and nothing else. The traditional mix of chopped onion and cilantro was available at the salsa bar, as well as a crock of flavorful stewed pinto beans. I found this to be a nice touch, and the housemade salsas were all good. The habanero and avocado salsas both had great flavor and some serious fire. Every taco meat was exceptional and well seasoned. The carnitas were a little crispy; the pollo wasn’t overdone; the cabeza was that perfect balance of meaty, fatty goodness that only comes from a roasted bovine head, and the tender lengua
PHOTO/ALLISON YOUNG
was a great example of why I love and admire expertly prepared beef tongue. A pollo quesadilla ($4.50), ordered for a youngster in our party, featured a lightly crisped flour tortilla, stuffed with meat and melted cheese and served with a bit of lettuce, tomato and sour cream. The kid made short work of it. The word “mula” is Spanish for mule, which apparently carries along some negative colloquial connotations. Regardless, the al pastor mula ($4.50) I ordered was essentially a double corn tortilla quesadilla, and that baby was great. It was simple—akin to something I’d make for a quick snack—but the meat and seasonings were anything but average. Carne asada is a beautiful thing. Throw in some cheese, sour cream and hot sauce, and I’m there, man. But put all of that atop a pile of french fries? That’s one tasty, cross-cultural, culinary comfort food collision. Gorditos’ asada fries can be ordered with any of the meat offerings, but we stuck with the marinated, grilled beef ($6, half order). The pile of fries was so big I had to double-check that I had actually purchased a half order. I could have used a little more goo and meat than fries, but, overall, it was a pretty tasty pile of guilty pleasure. The place is simple and unassuming. Our order was taken by the same woman who cooked the meat and then loudly whacked it to bits with a cleaver. The drafty building was pretty chilly on a quasi-winter evening, and the TV was a bit loud. It’s not fancy, but the food is good and the free pot of beans at the salsa bar was damn good. I wish every taqueria offered that. Ω
Gorditos Tacos 1771 Valley Road, 420-5542
Gorditos Tacos is open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sundays.
by KRis VagneR
k ri s v @ne w s re v i e w . c o m
Head brewer Patty Cronin pours a beer on draft at Under the Rose Brewery.
Hit me
High-alcohol beers Friday night, someone tapped a keg of Lagunitas. Saturday morning, the sunlight offended my eyes. Saturday afternoon I learned that we’d been drinking Brown Shugga,’ a floral, fruity, hoppy bitter brew with a 9.7 percent ABV and a woefully apt tagline —“dangerously slammable.” ABV is “alcohol by volume.” A Coors Light has an ABV of 4.2, and a regular Laguitas IPA—the beer I’d thought I was drinking on Friday night—weighs in at 6.2. So, the already hedonistic four beers I had may as well have been a whalloping six. My friend Melissa Test, brewer at Ten Torr Distilling and Brewing, told me that it wasn’t just the quantity of alcohol that hit me. It was also the quality. When making a high-alcohol beer, she said, “you’re pushing the yeast to their highest capacity.” Byproducts include not just the ethanol alcohol that’s common to all beers, but also heavy alcohols like methanol and propanol, which worsen a hangover. Now that I knew first-hand about the drawback, I was curious about strong beers’ appeal. It turns out that craft brewers like making them—so much, in fact, that there’s a festival to highlight their best efforts. It started when Under The Rose owner Jesse Kleinedler noticed that the snowy backgrounds in photos of the craft brewers’ winter festival in Michigan, her home state, made it look like a lot of fun. Her vision of dominating Instagram with pictures of Renoites imbibing in a snowy wonderland didn’t quite come to pass, though. The day of the first festival, it was 70 degrees and sunny. As it turns out, unseasonable warmth works just fine for Imbib’s Jason Green. It actually makes his beer taste better. “I would say, anything with a higher alcohol content it’s better to sip and enjoy,
PHOTO/JERI CHADWELL
to actually let ’em warm up in your glass,” he said. “Once you get into 50 degrees, the flavors open up. … You get to see the whole realm of the beer as it warms up in your hand. New flavors keep developing.” That’s one big reason behind strong beers. A high “grain bill”—a longer ingredient list—affords more complex flavors. Breweries are expected to each bring three or four varieties to the festival. So, while highlights will include beers as strong as Tonopah Brewing Company’s chocolatey-tasting M&M Imperial Stout with an 11 percent ABV, drinkers who fear that a Saturday afternoon strong-beer session might be a one-way ticket to a Sunday-morning head-throb session can rest assured that several brewers will be showing off brews in the one-digit ABV range as well. Greg Hinge from Brew Brothers in the Eldorado is thinking of bringing his English IPA—ABV 6.5—made with East Kent Golding hops that yield a flavor that’s more earthy than that of citrusy, floral West Coast IPAs. And Rich Weathers, who brews at both Tonopah Brewing Co. and Virginia City Brewery & Taphouse, is fixing to pour his WTF—“What the Freddy?”—an 8-percent-ABV raspberry IPA that’s aged in chardonnay barrels. Now that I know more about strong beers, I’m debating—should I indulge in a whole afternoon’s worth of them? Green had some advice for me: “Try to drink the same amount of water you just had in beer.” And Kleinedler offered an even safer card to play—she sells a discounted festival ticket that includes a food-truck meal and all-you-can drink coffee, hot chocolate and Italian sodas. She calls it the “designated driver.” I call it the “hangover preventer.” Ω Under The Rose Brewery’s Freeze Your Pints Off festival is from 1-5 p.m. Feb. 17, 559 E. Fourth St. Visit www.undertherosebrewing.com/events.
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5/11/10
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by Howard Hardee
For Merrill Garbus, front, and Nate Brenner of Tune-Yards, work ethic is half the battle.
Musical ritual Tune-Yards As the daughter of a piano teacher, Merrill Garbus hated practicing music when she was a kid. But now, she’s devoted to songwriting the same way some are to yoga or meditation. It’s become a fundamental part of her life—a ritual, a daily practice. “It’s taken a long time for me to respect practice in that way, understanding that it’s the only way to get better at anything,” she said. “It is like yoga because you’re forming these habits. You have this sort of pact to meet music head-on every day, and that feels really great.” Garbus is the force behind the Oaklandbased art-pop project Tune-Yards, an innovative merger of world music rhythms, indie song craft and socially engaged lyricism. In advance of Tune-Yards’ show with Sudan Archives at Cargo, Garbus talked with the News & Review about how she brought together the melange of influences on her new studio album, I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life. Leading up to creating the new album, Garbus was making music for a TV pilot as well as the New Yorker Radio Hour podcast—projects unrelated to Tune-Yards. “I just wanted to become a better writer,” she said. On the side, she was also DJing at a bar in Oakland, an experience that served as a lesson on how to make people move on the dance floor. “Dance rhythms have always been a focus of mine,” she said, “but to come at it from a DJ perspective was different for me.” Around the same time, she joined various activist groups, including Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), a national
network organizing white people to act as part of a multiracial majority for equality. She also enrolled in a course at East Bay Meditation Center on what it means to be white in America. “So much of my experience with race is based around shame and guilt, which don’t feel particularly useful, most of the time,” she said. “Having a Buddhist framework, which helps people work through those types of feelings, felt like a very productive context for me to address whiteness.” With the subject of white guilt in mind, Garbus set about creating a dance-forward album with longtime collaborator Nate Brenner. Thanks to a newfound discipline cultivated through meditation, she went into the rehearsal studio daily and produced an enormous amount of material. “We just made sure I showed up for work every day, which seems like an adult way to make music,” she said. “And that was despite all of my doubts about music, too—with everything going on in the world today, it was like, ‘What’s the point of this?’ ” Garbus says she resolved that sense of futility by dedicating her music to what she cares about—social justice, spirituality and the environment. For example, the album’s lead single, “Look at Your Hands,” is a statement on ownership and the injustice of, say, Nestlé profiting off bottling water from a creek in the San Bernardino National Forest. Garbus sings: “Ooh I wanna taste that, waste that/Sell me my own water off of my own land.” Garbus’s recent experiences fed into the themes of the new album, and her relentless songwriting ritual brought it to life. Such a structured approach to making music hasn’t taken the magic out of it for her, though. “It’s done the opposite,” she said. “It feels even more like a devotional practice.” Ω Tune-Yards play with Sudan Archives on Feb. 16 at Cargo Concert Hall, 255 N. Virginia St. Tickets are $20-23. Visit www.cargoreno.com.
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02.15.18 | RN&R | 23
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The Lecture hosted by Nandez, 10pm, no cover
Trunkweed, Curse League, The Dead Beat, Edward and You, 7pm, W, $5
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132 West St., (775) 329-2878
SATURDAY 2/17
LOUDPVCK, Be:Razz, C4, Grunge, 10pm, $7-$15
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24 | RN&R | 02.15.18
THURSDAY 2/15 JUB JUB’S THIRST PARLOR 71 S. Wells Ave., (775) 384-1652
FRIDAY 2/16
Havok, Condemned Existence, 8pm, $15
LAUGHING PLANET CAFE—UNR
Jazz Jam Session Wednesdays, 7:30pm, W, no cover
1480 N. Carson St., Carson City, (775) 841-4663
Cedric Williams & Sunni Frost, 6pm, no cover
THE LOFT
Magic Fusion, 7pm, 9pm, $21-$45
Magic After Dark, 9pm, $31-$45 Sage Armstrong, Nandez, 10pm, $15
Magic Fusion, 7pm, 9pm, $41-$51
MIDTOwN wINE BAR
DJ Trivia, 7pm, no cover
Jake’s Garage 5.0, 8:30pm, no cover
Wunderlust, 8:30pm, no cover
2100 Victorian Ave., Sparks, (775) 378-1643 10007 Bridge St., Truckee, (530) 587-8688
Chuck Hughes Trio, 8pm, no cover
MUMMERS
PADDY & IRENE’S IRISH PUB
Acoustic Wonderland Sessions, 8pm, no cover
PIGNIC PUB & PATIO
SNAFU Family GREM Fest, 8pm, no cover
THE POLO LOUNGE
’80s Night with DJ Bobby G, 8pm, no cover
235 Flint St., (775) 376-1948
1559 S. Virginia St., (775) 322-8864
Christopher Hawley Rollers, 8:30pm, no cover
Cañaveral de Humberto Pabón, 8pm, $TBA
Christopher Hawley Rollers, 8:30pm, no cover
Christopher Hawley Rollers, 8:30pm, no cover
Friday Night Party with DJ Bobby G, 8pm, no cover
T-N-Keys, DJ Bobby G, 8pm, no cover
Whiskey Preachers Jam Night, 8pm, M, Karaoke Night, 7pm, Tu, no cover
Blue Haven, 8pm, no cover
Dorothy Open mic, 7pm, W, no cover
76 N. C St., Virginia City, (775) 847-7474
SHEA’S TAVERN
KrashKarma, Qarin, American Slacker Society, Hellpig, 8pm, $5-$6
ST. JAMES INFIRMARY
Third Thursdays with Max Volume and Boondoggle, 9:30pm, no cover
2660 Lake Tahoe Blvd., S.L. Tahoe, (530) 544-3425
Feb. 16, 10 p.m. 1up 214 W. Commercial Row 813-6689
Wednesday Night Jam, 8pm, W, no cover
RED DOG SALOON
wHISKEY DICK’S SALOON
LOUDPVCK
Wheatstone Bridge, Lacey Mattison, Jonie Blinman, 8pm, no cover
106 S. C St., Virginia City, (775) 847-7210
445 California Ave., (775) 657-8484
Magic Fusion, 7pm, 9pm, M, Tu, W, $21-$46 T-N-Keys, 4:30pm, Tu, no cover Dave Mensing, 7:30pm, W, no cover
Banda Los Recoditos, 8pm, $35
Karaoke, 9pm, no cover
PONDEROSA SALOON
715 S. Virginia St., (775) 786-4774
Magic Fusion, 4:30pm, 7pm, 9pm, $21-$46
Jason King Band, 9pm, no cover
906 Victorian Ave., Ste. B, Sparks, (775) 409-3754 906-A Victorian Ave., Sparks, (775) 358-5484
Canyon Jam/Open Mic, 6:30pm, Tu, no cover
Soul Persuaders, 8:30pm, no cover
MILLENNIUM NIGHTCLUB
MOODY’S BISTRO BAR & BEATS
Dorothy, 8pm, Tu, $15 STBTTLCO, Alphabet Cult, 9pm, Tu, $5
Art Lande, Ralph Alessi, Hans Halt, Andy Heglund, 7:30pm, $10
941 N. Virginia St., (775) 870-9633
1527 S. Virginia St., (775) 800-1960
MON-WED 2/19-2/21
Strange and Unusual w/DJs eroticbuddha, Pelikan, 9pm, no cover
246 W. First St., (775) 329-4484
1021 Heavenly Village Way, S.L. Tahoe, (530) 523-8024
SUNDAY 2/18
Afroman, 7:30pm, $20
THE JUNGLE
LIVING THE GOOD LIFE NIGHTCLUB
SATURDAY 2/17
Guest DJs, 9pm, no cover
Saturday Dance Party, 9pm, no cover
Afroman, Luck Factor Zero, The Guestlist, 9pm, $20
Ren Thomas, 9pm, no cover
Feb. 20, 8 p.m. Jub Jub’s Thirst Parlor 71 S. Wells Ave. 384-1652
02.15.18 | RN&R | 25
AtlAntis CAsino ResoRt spA 3800 S. Virginia St., (775) 825-4700 1) Grand Ballroom 2) Cabaret
Boomtown CAsino
2100 Garson Road, Verdi, (775) 345-6000 1) Events Center 2) Guitar Bar
CARson VAlley inn
The Motet Feb. 16-17, 9 p.m. Crystal Bay Casino 14 Highway 28 Crystal Bay 833-6333
Karaoke Fourth Street BAR, 1114 E. Fourth St., (775) 324-7827: Karaoke with Chapin, Wed, 8pm, no cover Jimmy B’s Bar & Grill, 180 W. Peckham Lane, Ste 1070, (775) 686-6737: Karaoke, Sat, 9:30pm, no cover The Point, 1601 S. Virginia St., (775) 3223001: Karaoke, Thu-Sat, 8:30pm, no cover Spiro’s Sports Bar & Grille, 1475 E. Prater Way, Ste.103, Sparks, (775) 356-6000: Karaoke, Fri-Sat, 9pm, no cover West 2nd Street Bar, 118 W. Second St., (775) 348-7976: Karaoke, Mon-Sun, 9pm, no cover
1627 Hwy. 395, Minden, (775) 782-9711 1) Valley Ballroom 2) Cabaret Lounge
THURSDAY 2/15
FRIDAY 2/16
SATURDAY 2/17
SUNDAY 2/18
MON-WED 2/19-2/21
2) Atomika, 8pm, no cover
2) Atomika, 8pm, no cover Trey Stone, 10pm, no cover
2) Atomika, 8pm, no cover Trey Stone, 10pm, no cover
2) Trey Stone, 10pm, no cover
2) Escalade, 8pm, M, Tu, W, no cover
2) Jonathan Barton, 6pm, no cover
2) The Starliters, 5pm, no cover The Look, 9pm, no cover
2) Brother Dan, 5pm, no cover The Look, 9pm, no cover
2) Paul Covarelli, 5pm, no cover Jamie Rollins, 9pm, no cover
2) Tandymonium, 6pm, M, no cover Mark Miller, 6pm, Tu, no cover Stephen Lord, 6pm, W, no cover
2) Denver Saunders, 7pm, no cover
2) John Dawson Band, 8pm, no cover
2) John Dawson Band, 8pm, no cover
2) Stephen Lord, 6pm, no cover
2) Jamie Rollins, 6pm, Tu, no cover
1) Dead Winter Carpenters, 9pm, $17-$20
1) The Motet, The Main Squeeze, 9pm, $25-$30
1) The Motet, Monophonics, 9pm, $25-$30
1) Steven Michael Quezada, 8:30pm, W, $16-$20
2) Left of Centre, 9pm, no cover 3) DJ Roni V, 10pm, no cover
2) Left of Centre, 9pm, no cover 3) DJ Roni V, 10pm, no cover
2) Left of Centre, 9pm, no cover
2) Rock ’N’ Roll Experience, 9pm, M, no cover DJ Sam Forbes, 9pm, W, no cover
1) Live Boxing: Beltran vs. Moses, 4pm, $25-$75 3) Grand County Nights with DJ Jeremy, 10pm, no cover
2) Twista, 10pm, $20 3) Grand County Nights with DJ Jeremy, 10pm, no cover
CRystAl BAy CAsino
14 Hwy. 28, Crystal Bay, (775) 833-6333 1) Crown Room 2) Red Room
eldoRAdo ResoRt CAsino 345 N. Virginia St., (775) 786-5700 1) Theater 2) Brew Brothers 3) NoVi
GRAnd sieRRA ResoRt
2500 E. Second St., (775) 789-2000 1) Grand Theatre 2) LEX 3) Race & Sports Bar
2) Comedy Night at LEX, 8pm, $15 3) Grand County Nights with DJ Jeremy, 10pm, no cover
HARd RoCk Hotel And CAsino
1) Electrify: Rock N Roll Burlesque Show, 1) Electrify: Rock N Roll Burlesque Show, 1) Murs, Prozack Turner, Glass Tung, 9pm, $15-$20 9pm, $15-$20 Dylano, Melting Elk, 9pm, $17 2) DJ/dancing, 10pm, no cover 2) DJ/dancing, 10pm, no cover
50 Hwy. 50, Stateline, (844) 588-7625 1) Vinyl 2) Center Bar
HARRAH’s lAke tAHoe
1) Theory of a Deadman, 7pm, $33-$102
15 Hwy. 50, Stateline, (775) 588-6611 1) South Shore Room 2) Casino Center Stage
HARRAH’s Reno
219 N. Center St., (775) 786-3232 1) Showroom 2) Sapphire Lounge
1) The Magic of Eli Kerr, 7:30pm, $32-$42
1) The Magic of Eli Kerr, 7:30pm, $32-$42 Essence, 10pm, $30 2) All In, 8:30pm, no cover
montBleU ResoRt CAsino & spA 55 Highway 50, Stateline, (775) 588-3515 1) Showroom 2) Blu 3) Opal Ultra-Lounge
nUGGet CAsino ResoRt
2707 S. Virginia St., (775) 826-2121 1) Tuscany Ballroom 2) Terrace Lounge 3) Edge
silVeR leGACy ResoRt CAsino
407 N. Virginia St., (775) 325-7401 1) Grand Exposition Hall 2) Rum Bullions Island Bar 3) Aura Ultra Lounge 4) Silver Baron Lounge
2) Buddy Emmer and guest, 8pm, Tu, no cover
1) The Magic of Eli Kerr, 7:30pm, $32-$42 Essence, 10pm, $30 2) All In, 8:30pm, no cover 1) Color Me Badd, Kai, Drop N Harmony, 8pm, $25-$45
1) Trump vs. Obama: A Comedy Smackdown w/Reggie Brown, Bob Dibuono, 8pm, $30
2) Kyle Rea Biggest Little Orchestra, 8pm, no cover 3) Four Color Zack, 10pm, $20
2) Joshua Cook & The Key of Now, 6pm, no cover
Brew HaHa 2018 with Mojo Green, 7pm, $50-$75
1100 Nugget Ave., Sparks, (775) 356-3300
peppeRmill ResoRt spA CAsino
1) Dark Star Orchestra, 7:30pm, $27-$90
2) Kyle Rea Biggest Little Orchestra, 7pm, no cover
2) Kyle Rea Biggest Little Orchestra, 8pm, no cover
2) DJ R3volver, 9pm, no cover 4) DJ Mo Funk, 9pm, no cover
2) Rock ’N’ Roll Experience, 9pm, no cover Project1
2) Rock ’N’ Roll Experience,
9pm, no cover 5/11/10 3:02 PM
2) Joshua Cook & The Key of Now, 6pm, M, Tu, W, no cover
Page 14) DJ Mo Funk, 9pm, no cover
3) Seduction Saturdays, 9pm, $5
LocaLLy roasted good to the last drop
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FOR THE WEEK OF FEbRuaRy 15, 2018 For a complete listing of this week’s events or to post events to our online calendar, visit www.newsreview.com. JURASSIC TOUR: The traveling exhibition features 50 life-size, realistic dinosaurs in their natural habitat, rides on animatronic Tyrannosaurus rex and triceratops figures, dinosaur inflatable bounce houses, fossil digs and more. Sat, 2/17-Mon, 2/19, 10am. $23-$28. RenoSparks Livestock Events Center, 1350 N. Wells Ave., www.jurassictour.com.
MARDI GRAS DANCE PARTY: Dress up in your most festive costume or Mardi Gras garb for the Reno Blues Society’s annual party and silent auction fundraiser featuring live music by Bay Area blues guitarist and vocalist Maxx Cabello, Jr. and opening act The Blues Monsters. Sat, 2/17, 7:30pm. $17-$22. Center Court Grille, 6000 Plumas St., www.renoblues.org.
MARKING THE INFINITE PREMIERE TALK: The
Kid-O-Rama
2/17:
Squaw Valley | Alpine Meadows presents the annual, week-long event offering winter fun for all ages. The festivities kick off on Saturday, Feb. 17, with the Boarding for Breast Cancer (B4BC) Shred the Love event at Alpine Meadows featuring skiing and snowboarding, live music and raffles, the Big Truck Day at The Village at Squaw Valley with displays of fire trucks, snowplows and grooming machines, disco tubing at the SnoVentures Activity Zone and a fireworks show later that evening at the KT Base Bar. The fun continues through Saturday, Feb. 24, with Nastar Races, street parties, kids’ concerts and an all-kid game and craft room, among other highlights, at Squaw Valley | Alpine Meadows, 1960 Squaw Valley Road, Olympic Valley. Visit squawalpine.com.
EVENTS ALAN RUDOLPH—THE 1980s: Churchill Arts Council’s February Film Series concludes with Alan Rudolph’s 1985 film The Moderns, starring Keith Carradine, Linda Fiorentino, Wallace Shawn, Geneviève Bujold and Geraldine Chaplin. Fri, 2/16, 7pm. $10-$12. Barkley Theater, Oats Park Art Center, 151 E. Park St., Fallon, (775) 423-1440, www.churchillarts.org.
ANIMAL ARK WILD WINTER WEEKEND: Put on your winter coat and boots and head to Animal Ark to view the wildlife sanctuary’s lynx, bobcats, cougars, wolves and other wild residents playing outdoors. Call prior to your departure as severe weather or road conditions could cause the event to be canceled. Sat, 2/17-Sun, 2/18, 11am-3pm. $13 adults, $12 seniors, $10 children, free for kids age 2 and younger. Animal Ark Wildlife Sanctuary, 1265 Deerlodge Road, (775) 970-3111, animalark.org.
BOOK READING AND SIGNING WITH BERNARD SCHOPEN: Sundance Books and Music celebrates Bernard Schopen’s latest novel The Last Centurion. The author will read excerpts from his work and then sign copies for readers. Wed, 2/21, 6:30pm. Free. Sundance Books and Music, 121 California Ave., (775) 786-1188.
BREW HAHA 2018: Sierra Arts’ 23rd annual fundraiser will have more than 100 types of beer available for unlimited tastings and live music by Mojo Green to keep the party going through the evening. A VIP ticket allows event-goers access to the event an hour early, at 7pm, along with a pre-event opportunity to speak with the brewers. Fri, 2/16, 7pm. $50-$75. Nugget Casino Resort, 1100 Nugget Ave., Sparks, (775) 329-2787, sierraarts.org.
EDNA PURVIANCE & CHARLIE CHAPLIN FILM FESTIVAL: This festival honors the late film preservationist David Sheppard, who was known as a “superhero of silent films,” and will feature 16mm films starring actress and Nevada native Edna Purviance, who was a leading lady in many Charlie Chaplin films. A speakeasy bar will be open for drinks. 1920s period costume optional. Sat, 2/17, noon-3pm. $15-$26. Reno Little Theater, 147 E. Pueblo St., (775) 813-8900, renolittletheater.org.
FREEZE YOUR PINTS OFF 2018: Gather in the alley behind Under the Rose Brewing Company for an outdoor winter beer festival featuring local breweries, food trucks and live music. Proceeds benefit The Nevada Craft Brewers Association. Sat, 2/17, 1pm. Under the Rose Brewing Company, 559 E. Fourth St., (775) 657-6619, www.mkt.com/undertherose.
nine artists in the exhibition Marking the Infinite offer a glimpse into the diverse contemporary art practice of Aboriginal Australia. Learn about the significance and nuance of this practice from the collectors, curators and scholars who have helped to bring this work to a broader audience in a panel conversation moderated by Center for Art + Environment Director Bill Fox. Immediately following the lecture and panel, there will be a luncheon in the Nightingale Sky Room. Sat, 2/17, 10am. $40-$60. Nevada Museum of Art, 160 W. Liberty St., (775) 329-3333.
NORTHERN NEVADA GHOST HUNTERS MEET & GREET: Learn what this paranormal group is all about and share your paranormal stories and experiences with like-minded individuals. The ghosthunting-group has a couple of openings on its investigation team for people with a volunteering spirit, an open mind and who aren’t afraid of hard work. Sat, 2/17, 4:30pm. Free. Round Table Pizza at Sparks Galleria, 4751 Galleria Parkway, Suite 101, Sparks, (775) 830-3779, www.nngh.net.
SOUL OF A BANQUET: Artemisia Moviehouse presents a screening of Wayne Wang’s documentary film that tells the story of Cecilia Chiang, a Chinese-American restaurateur and chef who opened the renowned Mandarin Restaurant in 1961 and went on to change the course of Chinese cuisine in America. Sun, 2/18, 6pm. $5-$9. Good Luck Macbeth Theater, 124 W. Taylor St., (775) 636-3386, artemisiamoviehouse.weebly.com.
WINTER BIRDS OF GALENA FOREST: Join Alan Gubanich, former vice-president of the local Lahontan Audubon Society chapter, as he uses taxidermy mounts and photos to show you what birds you could possibly see during winter hikes in Galena Forest. Sat, 2/17, 2pm. Free. Galena Creek Visitor Center, 18250 Mount Rose Highway, (775) 849-4948.
aRT ARTISTS CO-OP GALLERY RENO: Things We Love. See many of your favorite things at this multi-artist show on view through Feb. 28. Thu, 2/15-Wed, 2/21. Free. Artist Co-Op Gallery Reno, 627 Mill St., (775) 3228896, www.artistsco-opgalleryreno.com.
OXS GALLERY: Mementi Mori. Photographer
UNIVERSITY SYMPHONY ANNUAL HONORS CONCERT: The concert features students
Paul Baker Prindle began this series about 10 years ago, and the images are set upon the everyday landscape of the United States. The banal documentary look of these representations belies the horrific events that have taken place at sites he visited from California to New York. These photographs are of locations where gay men, lesbians and transgender individuals have been murdered. His images reference objects that engage memory and feelings of loss. The exhibition runs Monday-Friday through March 9. There will be a reception and artist’s talk on Feb. 20, 5:30-7:30pm. Thu, 2/1-Fri, 2/16, Mon, 2/19-Wed, 2/21, 8am-5pm. Free. OXS Gallery, 716 N. Carson St., Suite A, Carson City, (775) 687-6680.
who are chosen through competition to perform a solo work with the symphony. Tue, 2/20, 7:30pm. $5, free for UNR students with ID. Nightingale Concert Hall, Church Fine Arts Building, University of Nevada, Reno, 1335 N. Virginia St., (775) 784-4278.
ONSTaGE 45 PLAYS FOR 45 PRESIDENTS: This play is a chronological, biographical survey of the lives and presidencies of each of the 45 men who have held the office so far. Their mistakes and successes are celebrated by a company of actors who take turns donning a star-spangled coat that symbolizes the presidency. Thu,
SIERRA NEVADA COLLEGE, TAHOE GALLERY: Basin and Range. Curated by Checko Salgado and Jerry Schefcik, Basin and Range is part of the Nevada Touring Initiative—Traveling Exhibition Program. Basin and Range features 18 Southern Nevada artists who were invited to create as a response to and in honor of a tract of Nevada land covering 700,000 acres, now identified as the Basin and Range National Monument. The exhibit will be featured in the Tahoe Gallery in the Prim Library through March 23. The reception is on Thursday, Feb. 15, 5-7pm. Thu, 2/15-Fri, 2/16, Mon, 2/19-Wed, 2/21. Free. Sierra Nevada College, Tahoe Gallery, 999 Tahoe Blvd., Incline Village, (775) 831-1314, www.sierranevada.edu.
2/15, 7pm; Fri, 2/16, 3pm & 7pm; Sat, 2/17, 7pm. $8-$10. Damonte Ranch High School Theatre, 10500 Rio Wrangler Parkway, (775) 851-5656.
THE LION IN WINTER: Brüka Theatre presents its production of the 1966 play by James Goldman, depicting the personal and political conflicts of Henry II of England, his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, their children and their guests during Christmas, 1183. Thu, 2/15-Sat, 2/17, 8pm. $20-$25. Brüka Theatre, 99 N. Virginia St., (775) 323-3221.
THE OPEN HOUSE: Restless Artists Theatre presents Will Eno’s award-winning play about family dysfunction. Thu, 2/15-Sat, 2/17, 7:30pm; Sun, 2/18, 2pm. $12-$20. Restless Artists Theatre Company, 295 20th St., Sparks, (775) 525-3074, rattheatre.org.
MuSIC ART LANDE: The Grammy-nominated improvisational jazz pianist will be accompanied by local jazz artists Ralph Alessi, Hans Halt and Andy Heglund. Fri, 2/16, 7:30pm. $10, free for students. Laughing Planet Cafe, 941 N. Virginia St., (775) 870-9633, www.renojazz.org.
POETRY OUT LOUD STATEWIDE SEMIFINALS: The National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation have partnered with state arts agencies to support Poetry Out Loud, a contest that encourages the nation’s youth to learn about great poetry through memorization and recitation. This program helps students master public speaking skills, build self-confidence and learn about their literary heritage. More than 15 Washoe County School District high school students will compete for the chance to represent Washoe County at the state competition. Thu, 2/15, 5:30pm. Free. Nevada Museum of Art, 160 W. Liberty St., (775) 329-3333.
COME IN FROM THE COLD: The winter family entertainment series continues with a performance by Backstage Pass.
Sat, 2/17, 7pm. $3 suggested donation. Western Heritage Interpretive Center, Bartley Ranch Regional Park, 6000 Bartley Ranch Road, (775) 828-6612.
RAMON AYALA: The Grammy award-winning musician, composer and songwriter of norteño and conjunto music performs with special guest Lorenzo de Monteclaro. Fri, 2/16, 8pm. $49.50$69.50. Reno Ballroom, 401 N. Center St., (775) 325-7333.
THE ROYALE: Good Luck Macbeth Theater
RENO CHAMBER ORCHESTRA: Guest cellist Clive Greensmith will perform with the orchestra in Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33 by Tchaikovsky, the “Minstrel’s Song” by Alexander Glazunov and Lukas Foss’s Capriccio. The program will also features works by Mozart and Bizet. Sat, 2/17, 7:30pm; Sun, 2/18, 2pm. $5$55. Nightingale Concert Hall, Church Fine Arts Building, University of Nevada, Reno, 1335 N. Virginia St., (775) 348-9413.
Company presents Marco Ramirez’s drama. Jay “The Sport” Jackson dreams of being the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. But it’s 1905, and in the racially segregated world of boxing, his chances are as good as knocked out. When a crooked boxing promoter hatches a plan for the fight of the century, “The Sport” just might land a place in the ring with the reigning white heavyweight champion. The play runs through Feb. 24. Thu, 2/15-Sat, 2/17, 7:30pm. $18-$20. Good Luck Macbeth, 124 W. Taylor St., (775) 322-3716.
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28 | RN&R | 02.15.18
by AMY ALKON
Dr. Strangerlove I’m a 33-year-old woman. Though I don’t want a boyfriend right now, I have a strong sex drive and don’t want to go without sex. I’ve tried the hookup apps, but besides finding sleeping with strangers sexually unsatisfying, I’m always a little surprised at how emotionally empty I end up feeling. The reality is, hookups tend to work best if you are a man or a trailer. Research by sociologist Elizabeth A. Armstrong and her colleagues finds that for women, hookup sex is particularly problematic in the orgasm-dispensing department. In first-time hookups, women they surveyed reported orgasms only 11 percent of the time—compared with 67 percent of the time from sex in a relationship. However, the more times a woman had slept with her current hookup partner the more likely she was to finish with screams of ecstasy—and not the ones that stand in for “You ’bout done yet?” As for why you feel crappy after your latest Captain Hookup shinnies down the drainpipe, I’ve written before about how female emotions seem to have evolved to act as an alarm system against deficient male “investment.” They push women to crave emotional connection after sex—even when they went into it wanting nothing more than a little sexercise with some himbo. Pop the hood on the brain, and you’ll see support for this notion. An analysis of findings from 24 brain imaging studies led psychiatrist Timm Poeppl and his colleagues to conclude that “sexual stimulation seems to activate key regions for emotional attachment and pair bonding more consistently in women than in men.” So, it isn’t exactly bizarre that you, as a woman, find hooking up with a stranger about as emotionally and sexually satisfying as a fist bump. This doesn’t mean you have to rush a boyfriend into your life to have sex. You can eliminate some of the problems of hookup sex by finding a regular sex-quaintance— ideally, a guy friend who’s sweet and attractive but who falls steeply short of the qualifications you have for a romantic partner. That way, you’ll be less likely to let any “activated” brain regions vault you into a relationship. This is somebody you can gradually show around your body
and train in the magic trick it takes for you to have an orgasm—as opposed to some single-serving Romeo who approaches your body like a burglar in a pitch-black china shop. And, finally, having at least friendly affection for somebody you sleep with should mean that sex leaves you feeling, if not loved, well, less like a rental car somebody just dropped off. “Note to person checking in this vehicle: Makes weird noises when cornering.”
Champagne and suffering I’m a 30-year-old gay guy. I was laid off, and I’m freelancing crazy hours to try to pay my rent and bills. My best friend’s birthday was this past weekend, and I did what I could timewise (and put a modest gift on my credit card), but he’s totally bent out of shape because he feels like I neglected him. Putting your financial survival first doesn’t mean you’re a bad friend. The, uh, brat of honor probably just sees it that way because of what psychologists call “attribution bias.” This describes how we tend to be charitable in explaining our own errors and failings—excusing them as situational (the result of something that’s happened to us)—while attributing others’ to the sort of people they are (compassionless, birthday-hating monsters). Have a sit-down with your friend and explain that you care deeply about him. Review your history of showing this. Emphasize that it was a lack of time and funding, not a lack of feeling, that kept you from, say, renting a sufficiently mansionesque bouncy house or hiring David Blaine to make balloon animals on his special day. Apply compassion. Recognize that there’s probably some woundyplace in him that makes him this way, basically expecting his birthday to be treated like some major national holiday. OK, maybe the guy’s first name is Martin. Chances are, the two that follow aren’t “Luther” and “King.”Ω
ERIK HOLLAND
Got a problem? Write Amy Alkon, 171 Pier Ave., No. 280, Santa Monica, CA 90405, or email AdviceAmy@aol.com (www.advicegoddess.com).
02.15.18 | RN&R | 29
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Free will astrology
by ROb bRezsny
For the week oF February 15, 2018 ARIES (March 21-April 19): At 12,388 feet, Mount
Fuji is Japan’s highest peak. If you’re in good shape, you can reach the top in seven hours. The return trip can be done in half the time—if you’re cautious. The loose rocks on the steep trail are more likely to knock you off your feet on the way down than on the way up. I suspect this is an apt metaphor for you in the coming weeks, Aries. Your necessary descent may be deceptively challenging. So make haste slowly! Your power animals are the rabbit and the snail.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): In 1903, Orville and
Wilbur Wright made a few short jaunts through the air in a flying machine they called the Flyer. It was a germinal step in a process that ultimately led to your ability to travel 600 miles per hour while sitting in a chair 30,000 feet above the Earth. Less than 66 years after the Wright Brothers’ breakthrough, American astronauts landed a space capsule on the moon. They had with them a patch of fabric from the left wing of the Flyer. I expect that during the coming weeks, you will be climaxing a long-running process that deserves a comparable ritual. Revisit the early stages of the work that enabled you to be where you are now.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): In 2006, five percent
of the world’s astronomers gathered at an international conference and voted to demote Pluto from a planet to a “dwarf planet.” Much of the world agreed to honor their declaration. Since then, though, there has arisen a campaign by equally authoritative astronomers to restore Pluto to full planet status. The crux of the issue is this: How shall we define the nature of a planet? But for the people of New Mexico, the question has been resolved. State legislators there formally voted to regard Pluto as a planet. They didn’t accept the demotion. I encourage you to be inspired by their example, Gemini. Whenever there are good arguments from opposing sides about important matters, trust your gut feelings. Stand up for your preferred version of the story.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Ray Bradbury’s
dystopian bestseller Fahrenheit 451 was among the most successful of the 27 novels he wrote. It won numerous awards and has been adapted into films, plays and graphic novels. Bradbury wrote the original version of the story in nine days, using a typewriter he rented for 20 cents per hour. When his publisher urged him to double the manuscript’s length, he spent another nine days doing so. According to my reading of the planetary configurations, you Cancerians now have a similar potential to be surprisingly efficient and economical as you work on an interesting creation or breakthrough—especially if you mix a lot of play and delight into your labors.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Poet Louise Glück has
characterized herself as “afflicted with longing yet incapable of forming durable attachments.” If there is anything in you that even partially fits that description, I have good news: In the coming weeks, you’re likely to feel blessed by longing rather than being afflicted by it. The foreseeable future will also be prime time for you to increase your motivation and capacity to form durable attachments. Take full advantage of this fertile grace period!
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): In 2004, a man named
Jerry Lynn tied a battery-operated alarm clock to a string and dangled it down a vent in his house. He was hoping that when the alarm sounded, he would get a sense of the best place to drill a hole in his wall to run a wire for his TV. But the knot he’d made wasn’t perfect, and the clock slipped off and plunged into an inaccessible spot behind the wall. Then, every night for 13 years, the alarm rang for a minute. The battery was unusually strong! A few months ago, Lynn decided to end the mild but constant irritation. Calling on the help of duct specialists, he retrieved the persistent clock. With this story as your inspiration, and in accordance with astrological omens, I urge you Virgos to finally put an end to your equivalent of the maddening alarm clock. (Read the story: tinyurl. com/alarmclockmadness.)
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Was Napoléon
Bonaparte an oppressor or liberator? The
answer is both. His work in the world hurt a lot of people and helped a lot of people. One of his more magnanimous escapades transpired in June 1798, when he and his naval forces invaded the island of Malta. During his six-day stay, he released political prisoners, abolished slavery, granted religious freedom to Jews, opened 15 schools, established the right to free speech, and shut down the Inquisition. What do his heroics have to do with you? I don’t want to exaggerate, but I expect that you, too, now have the power to unleash a blizzard of benevolence in your sphere. Do it in your own style, of course, not Napoléon’s.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): “Trees that are slow
to grow bear the best fruit,” said French playwright Molière. I’m going to make that your motto for now, Scorpio. You have pursued a gradual, steady approach to ripening, and soon it will pay off in the form of big bright blooms. Congratulations on having the faith to keep plugging away in the dark! I applaud your determination to be dogged and persistent about following your intuition even though few people have appreciated what you were doing.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): The growth you
can and should foster in the coming weeks will be stimulated by quirky and unexpected prods. To get you started, here are a few such prods. 1. What’s your hidden or dormant talent, and what could you do to awaken and mobilize it? 2. What’s something you’re afraid of but might be able to turn into a resource? 3. If you were a different gender for a week, what would you do and what would your life be like? 4. Visualize a dream you’d like to have while you’re asleep tonight. 5. If you could transform anything about yourself, what would it be? 6. Imagine you’ve won a free vacation to anywhere you want. Where would you go?
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): You may think you have uncovered the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But according to my analysis of the astrological omens, you’re just a bit more than halfway there. In order to get the rest of the goods, you’ll have to ignore your itch to be done with the search. You’ll have to be unattached to being right and smart and authoritative. So please cultivate patience. Be expansive and magnanimous as you dig deeper. For best results, align yourself with poet Richard Siken’s definition: “The truth is complicated. It’s two-toned, multi-vocal, bittersweet.”
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): The posh magazine
Tatler came up with a list of fashionable new names for parents who want to ensure their babies get a swanky start in life. Since you Aquarians are in a phase when you can generate good fortune by rebranding yourself or remaking your image, I figure you might be interested in using one of these monikers as a nickname or alias. At the very least, hearing them could whet your imagination to come up with your own ideas. Here are Tatler’s chic avant-garde names for girls: Czar-Czar; Debonaire; Estonia; Figgy; Gethsemane; Power; Queenie. Here are some boys’ names: Barclay; Euripides; Gustav; Innsbruck; Ra; Uxorious; Wigbert; Zebedee.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Now that you have
finally paid off one of your debts to the past, you can start window-shopping for the future’s best offers. The coming days will be a transition time as you vacate the power spot you’ve outgrown and ramble out to reconnoiter potential new power spots. So bid your crisp farewells to waning traditions, lost causes, ghostly temptations, and the deadweight of people’s expectations. Then start preparing a vigorous first impression to present to promising allies out there in the frontier.
You can call Rob Brezsny for your Expanded Weekly Horoscope: (900) 950-7700. $1.99 per minute. Must be 18+. Touchtone phone required. Customer service (612) 373-9785. And don’t forget to check out Rob’s website at www.realastrology.com.
by JERi ChADwEll
Press agent
was at these different mints, anyone who was operating it would see that builder’s plate on there and know that the press had been here in Carson City. In the 1950s, they decided to upgrade some of the presses in San Francisco. So, they were going to destroy it for scrap. We had a friend there in the Bay Area who let us know about the press. We inquired about preserving it, and the mint sold it to us for $250 dollars in 1958.
Bob Nylen, the curator of history at the Nevada State Museum in Carson City, says the museum’s Coin Press No. 1—which struck its first coin at the Carson City Mint in 1870—has been returned to operation for demonstrations, after a year of repairs and restoration. The demonstrations will take place on the last Friday of each month from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. and from 1 to 4 p.m. Visitors can purchase a blank silver planchet to have struck with a commemorative design in the press.
The press was down for a year. Were the repairs quite extensive or serious? We had to have several parts replaced. The press had gone 40 years since it had its last major rehabilitation, back in 1975— just before it went into operation for the bicentennial. That’s when it got totally rebuilt and then put into service here to make medallions for the bicentennial. … It was due for a major overhaul.
I’ve heard that it had a major failure that was fixed by machinists at the Virginia & Truckee back when it was only like eight years old. Right. That was an amazing thing. That’s why it even exists today, we believe. It was the first press here when the operation started in 1870. In 1878, it suffered this malfunction that cracked the upper frame
When repairs need to be done, is that work done locally now?
of the press, so they had to decide if they were going to ship it back to the original manufacturer back in Philadelphia, called Morgan & Orr. What they decided was that the Virginia & Truckee railroad shops could do the repair here, just in Carson City. And they were located about a block away from the mint here.
A lot easier than shipping 12,000 pounds back to Philadelphia. Yeah, and so what they did to preserve the press to this day was—they took off the original builder’s plate on it. It said “Morgan & Orr, Philadelphia.” They took that off and either made a new one or just redid the original and put on it, “Virginia & Truckee Railroad Works” and then the date, “Carson, 1878.” When the minting operation stopped in the 1890s, it went back to Philadelphia. After World War II, it went to San Francisco. When the press
We sent it off to the company that did the work back in 1975, when the press was put back into operation for the bicentennial. They’re still in existence. They’re over in Oakland, California. It’s called Columbia Machine Works. Actually, their owner today—he was just an apprentice in 1975. He knew the machine. … He’s very aware of the history and the background of the press. They were the logical company to go to, to have them make the parts we needed. Their primary specialty is coin presses.
Why are coins with the Carson City mint mark so collectible? I think it’s because the press was not in operation for that long. … It was from 1870 to 1893, and there were actually three years in the 1880s when production was stopped. So it isn’t a long history of minting coins. I just think the fact of the location, too—the fabulous Comstock Lode, Virginia City, the history of the American West, all go to create this interest in collectors. Ω
by BRUCE VAN DYKE
Professional distress All this teeth-gnashing and handwringing about the Rob Foster affair is pretty easily explained. Trump, as a living, breathing relic from 1956, could not care less if a staffer slaps the old lady around a little. Not a prob. Wife-thumping is simply not a fireable offense, but more like something to chat about while waiting to tee off on a crowded par 3 (although one can’t help but wonder what would happen if Ivanka showed up to work one morning with a petite little shiner). Well, let’s just move on to the next crisis, shall we? • Retrumplicans attacking the credibility of Christopher Steele completely sidestep the fact that intelligence heavyweights like Clapper, Brennan and Comey all consider the guy to be an impeccable pro. Indeed, comparing Steele’s believability to Dum Dum’s is like comparing the Beatles to the
Archies (the timelessness of “Sugar Sugar” notwithstanding). So when Steele, a veteran spy who’s been around the block a whole bunch of times, says stuff like he was “shocked at the extent of collusion his sources were reporting,” and that reading those source reports was “a lifechanging experience,” well, these are comments that carry not just excellent melodrama but also some real weight—way more than most. And when Steele grew concerned enough to call his FBI contacts to meet him in Rome for show-andtell, he described their responses to his data as “shock and horror.” Is it not really seriously significant that these reactions are reported by experienced agents who aren’t shocked or horrified easily? At that same Rome meeting in September ’16, Steele admitted that he “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and
was passionate about him not being president.” When we ask why he felt so strongly about a possible President Dum Dum, we get directly to the beating heart of the Mueller investigation. Retrumplicans try to use Steele’s statement as proof that he was prejudiced against Twitler, which is bullshit. The more accurate interpretation here is the obvious one—Steele, in the course of his investigation, had his fucking mind blown by the sheer size and extent of Trump’s financial entanglements with Russians. And when you throw in some juicy bonus goodies, like a very naughty video taped in the Moscow Ritz, well, you have yourself an agreeable candidate. One you can really work with. One who will simply decline to install congressional sanctions against Russia. One who will never tell you when he talks to the Big Bossman. Ω
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