Letters

New age, old age

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

I guess it’s appropriate that we’re running an “aging sex” story on the cover because my little column this week is somewhat age related. It’s like this: For going on 10 years I battled with my weight and blood sugar— borderline diabetes, insulin resistance, whatever you want to call it. Finally, I overcame the problem— for the moment— bringing my glucose down to where my A1c is probably lower than yours.

Great, congratulations to me. Because the moment I solved my blood glucose problems, my blood fats— triglycerides, cholesterols, what have you— freaked out. The HDLs are low, the LDLs are high, blah, blah. You know the drill.

My doctor, bless his heart, says, “You have to go on a statin. People who are on statins live longer.” It’s not like he was pussyfooting around. If I don’t go on this drug, I will die sooner.

Well, my dad starting having heart attacks when he was younger than me. I remember a triglycerides result I got back in the ’80s that was over 400. I always figured it was an anomaly. But there we were, two months away from my 50th birthday, and another screwed result from the genetic crap shoot. I should also mention this conversation was woven into a discussion of my first colonoscopy.

Well, I agreed to take the statin. He prescribed 20 mgs of Zocor (Simvastatin) a day, and it drove me crazy. It took a few weeks of gradual decline, but man, decline I did. I became prone to anxiety and muscle cramps, bloated with gas, and moody, forgetful, and irritable bordering on angry. It even caused me to have a temporary weight gain. I’m in no way trying to be disrespectful when I say that I can’t believe I waited 50 years to have my first period.

The doc took me off the drug for two weeks. I guess my metabolism is supposed to reboot. But once I start again, I’m stopping if I feel a twinge of side effect. Spending the next 30 years feeling like I’m on the wrong side of the looking glass doesn’t feel sexy to me at all.

Bob the Potato

Audrey Brust, 7 Reno

The sexual counter-revolution

I believe many of our societal issues are directly related to the use of contraceptives because they allow the sexual act to be performed without accountability. It reinforces personal gratification detached from natural law, which states that sex between a man and a woman can produce a child during fertile days if all is well physiologically. By circumventing this law, people are objectified because it takes the person out of the equation; it becomes solely an act of gratification. If a particular act produces something as significant as creating another human being, doesn’t it seem logical that there would be responsibility attached to that act? Married couples often have the most issues surrounding sex. Women often feel unappreciated and men often struggle with pornography. Could there be a direct correlation between this and sex without responsibility? I think so due to this objectification. Single people struggle with sexual issues as well. Women will involve themselves in sexual encounters/relationships often in an effort to feel loved and valued. Men will participate in the same type of relationship mostly for physical gratification. This may not always be true, but most will agree they do not feel a sense of responsibility when it comes to sex. Why should they? Contraceptives take accountability out of the situation. Women are fertile a few days out of each month. If instead of using contraceptives, people did not have sex for those few days, value would be restored to the people rather than the sexual act. I believe there would be a reduction in sexual perversions that eventually lead to reduced rape, human trafficking, child pornography, abortion and single parent households. And women would develop other ways of finding value rather than through their physical beauty and sexuality. If you do not agree with me, try it. Dawn Harris Reno

Racist slur

Re “Sheila Leslie: carpetbagger” (Right to Your Head, Feb. 23):

Sean Cary knows neither the English language nor American history. “Carpetbaggers” were Northern teachers, doctors, missionaries, and railroad engineers, who came South after the Civil War to help rebuild the Southern states, and to bring education and other life-sustaining benefits to former slaves. Southerners invented the pejorative word. Cary’s ugly rant is pure hate-mongering. He crosses the line of decency and of journalistic ethics. “Carpetbagger” is a racist term designed to perpetuate racism. Valerie P. Cohen Reno

Thanks again, firefighters

Last night the unimaginable happened and in the middle of the night, the house across the street from us was on fire. Doubly unimaginable because the house two houses down from us burned nearly to the ground a year and a half ago. I saw the same response as before: Reno’s finest, and they were once again professional to the hilt. There were four engines, including a ladder truck from Station No. 1 downtown and a truck from Station No. 8 on McCarran Boulevard. I didn’t see the numbers on the others. They had the fire out within an hour. In the time I have lived here I have been continually and profoundly amazed at how good our police and fire departments are. It is one of the reasons why Reno is a very good place to live. Before we cut taxes and services in these desperate times, we should consider the value we are receiving for our tax dollars. Some things, like the safety of the family who lives in that house, are worth far more than a dollar amount will ever represent. Thank you, Reno Fire Department. You are our heroes.

Shel Davis Reno

Free country

Re “Sheila Leslie: carpetbagger” (Right to Your Head, Feb. 23):

Newsflash: If you run for political office, you can never again do anything for any reason that isn’t political. What a jaded point of view! In Nevada, where we have citizen legislators with real lives and day jobs, I find it extremely cynical to suggest that all major life decisions are based on political motives. State Sen. Sheila Leslie, like all of us, has the right to live and move where she chooses. Unless she stated she was moving for political reasons, it is you who are indulging in bold classless moves by making that assumption as a public accusation. The condescension with which you end your article speaks volumes about you, but little about Sen. Leslie. In my experience, she has always been more respectful than that, even to her opponents.

Vicki LoSasso Reno

The little co-op

Re “Organically grown” (Feature story, Feb. 9):

Regarding the question of the Washoe Zephyr Co-op of years past, they are two completely different business entities. Other than the fact that they are food cooperatives there is no connection, one to the other. Much effort was made to keep the Zephyr open, but in the end, the options weren’t there. The current co-op, the Great Basin Community Food Cooperative is open to the public. Shop local, support our local farmers, put money back into our community, Reno!

Marigael Morris Reno

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THIS MODERN WORLD BY TOM TOMORROW

Free at last

When William Raggio, who died last week after an exceptionally useful career as a state senator, was forced out of the Senate Republican floor leader’s post, it liberated him.

He was driven out by fanatic members who have come to typify that great political party. They were upset that he had supported U.S. Sen. Harry Reid’s reelection over extremist RINO Sharron Angle, a sometime Republican (see Upfront, Page 8) who used the party as a vehicle to advance her agenda.

Republican leaders around the state watched aghast as the GOPsenators sent 37 years of experience packing.

Raggio came to the Senate in 1973 when Republicans in the Nevada Senate were people like Carl Dodge, Cliff Young and Coe Swobe, who saw legislating as a shared task among all members. It was a new role for Raggio, formerly a tough prosecutor with disdain for Democrats.

“The first thing that happens to you is you realize that you have to develop a consensus to get anything done,” he said.

That approach served him well, and over the years his achievements included educational accountability, creation of the regional planning process in Washoe County and establishment of the Washoe County Airport Authority.

But his kind of lawmaking was passing. He said it was “not that we’ve changed, it’s just the times that have changed.” In truth, it was both. As he evolved into a moderate legislator, his party kept sending legislators to Carson City who considered his working with the enemy to be treachery. They believed that if it took developing consensus with Democrats to get something done—which would require conceding some ground to Democrats— then it was better to get nothing done. Dealing with the GOPintransigents took a toll on Raggio.

There were times when he thought his colleagues were going mad, as when the minority of 15 members of the 2003 Assembly, exploiting the supermajority requirements on taxes, retreated from the legislative halls to their offices upstairs to wait until they got their way, pushing that year’s business into two special sessions. In a time when citizens were abandoning partisan politics in droves, his GOPsenators were becoming more partisan, incessantly interrupting legislative floor sessions to go into closed caucuses to establish party positions and then enforce party discipline, a throwback to the early 20th century.

Under Raggio, Senate Republicans usually had a majority. They lost it in his last legislature, in 2008. But the Democrats still needed some Republican votes. The only thing that stood between them and enacting their whole program was Raggio. He deftly used the votes of himself and a couple of other GOPmoderates to limit Democratic action and impose conservative pension and prevailing wage changes and other Republican conditions on a fumbling new Democratic leader as the price of their support, something the GOPrecalcitrants could not do, once again demonstrating his legislative skills. He did what the Republican fanatics could not do—restrain the Democrats.

When he was finally forced out as GOPleader in 2010 by the dogmatists at a time when his health was uncertain, it let him stop babysitting and leave the Senate Republicans to their own devices by resigning.

In the end, the Republicans who ejected him from their floor leader’s post freed him.

And imprisoned themselves. Ω

Do you use local buses?

Asked at Java Jungle, 246 W. First St.

Ryan Bugg

Store manager I don’t, actually. No, I ride my bike most and don’t really have need to. I like walking or riding my bike.

Meagan Mixon

Student No, because I have my own car. I like to walk everywhere, and I live downtown so I don’t have to drive.

Erica Wirthlin

Student Yes, I do. I don’t have a car. It’s fairly convenient. I just use it to get places I can’t bike to, like Whole Foods or somewhere that is further along on Virginia Street than I can really walk or bike.

George Kepner

Information technology manager Yes, I do, actually. … I really wish they would extend certain lines, like having a McCarran line that does the McCarran circle. But for the most part, you get where you need to go.

Kelby Casale

Cook No, I don’t. I live in Spanish Springs, and they’re really inconvenient for me. They don’t even go out as far as I live. They go out to where Reed High School is, and I work really late downtown so the bus schedule doesn’t even work for me.