Free Will Astrology

Wildflower

Pat Cambell owns Wildflower Village, 4275-4395 West Fourth St., a unique combination of motel, boutique and arts center. The village has run into some financial problems and is holding an auction fundraiser on Saturday, June 22. For more information, visit www.wildflowervillage.com.

What’s going on?

Well, we just need to raise the funds to pay the taxes. We had a little loan going on a small portion of the property that would have paid the taxes and given us a little cash flow for the next year, and the doctor that has the primary loan on it didn’t want us to do that. So, we have to scramble to come up with the money.

So you’re doing an auction?

We’re doing a huge auction. We have some fairly expensive art, like a huge totem pole and we have a [Sergio] Bustamante … he’s a very well collected artist, and we have a moon of his that’s pretty valuable. We have a lot of art by artists that sell in our galleries. We have some Inuit art, quite a bit of art glass, and we’re auctioning off stays in our bed and breakfast and stays in our motel rooms.

What’s your fundraising goal?

About $50,000.

How close are you to achieving that?

Well, we won’t know until we have the auction closed, which will be Saturday night at 7, when we’re doing what we call an “unburn.” Businesses have been known to burn down in order to cover costs when they have a problem, so we’re going to unburn. It seems appropriate since it’s close to Burning Man.

PHOTO/Brad Bynum

Is there information about the auction items up on the website?

It isn’t all on the website yet. … What happens is people keep saying, “We want to help. We’ll donate something.” The most important thing is to get people to come out. … They can come [to bid] any time they want from 4 to 7 during the day in our pub, or they can come on Saturday. The unburn starts at 9 in the morning. We’ll have music and entertainement going from 4 into the evening. There will be Jill Marlene and dancers and Dave Cherry.

Tell me a little more about Wildflower Village.

It started out as four old motels on six and a quarter acres. We have two galleries. We have a pottery studio. We have an art house where we have classes. … We have a coffee shop where we do meet-ups. We rent Penske trucks. We rent bicycles. We have motel rooms, hostel rooms and bed and breakfast rooms. We’re evolving, and we always add new things. One of our hopes is that we’ll take out the six trailers … and make those into a multipurpose room that’s both an indoor and outdoor theater, and we’re going to use some geothermal and put in a soaking tub. We’re going to add a bocce ball court. We’ve evolved from what we were to what we are with not much extra financing. We’ve had trouble getting financing, so we’ve had a real struggle doing that, but we’re still here.

You were recently one of the principal locations of the Nada Dada art festival. How was that this year?

Oh, it was outstanding. The last few years we’ve always had the most artists. Last year, we had 40 of the 60 and this year we had 25 of the 50. We’ve done really well. We have a lot of fun. Reno, I think, benefits from an entertaiment venue where you can have people of all ages and still have alcohol and entertainment and fun and everyone’s respectful of each other. We do a lot of steampunk here and pirates. We’ve had three or four steampunk and pirate parties. … The function that’s coming up is our chance to really, one, get better known, and to take care of our financial problem. I think we’ll take care of it. We’ve had such an outpour of support from the community that I don’t think it’s going to be a problem. I think it’s going to happen. Ω

My days as a jock ∫y Bruce Van Dye

I remember it well, the day I became a high school basketball player. Paradoxically, I made this decision during a football game.

I was on the punt return unit for my high school junior varsity team, and we were on the field doing our thing. I was closing in on their returner with all the 10th grade speedy hostility I could muster, when a blocker blindsided me and sent me hurtling through space. Literally. Hurtling through space. Then, I landed. I had gone from hurtling to hurting. I’d forgotten how to breathe. The old line, “Did you get the license plate of the truck that just hit me?” was completely applicable. I never saw the guy coming. It was a perfectly legal hit, a vivid wipeout of the kind that makes fans roar with drunken bloodlust. Basically, that dude had erased me. Turned me into a grease spot.

I remember getting up after that blast and jogging, zombie-like, over to the sideline. Thankful that I was no longer in the game, I just stood there, stunned. And still hurting. I hurt right down to my electrons. I had never been blown up quite like that in a football game, and I think that maybe I was a little shocked that some other human would actually want to inflict that kind of mayhem on a nice boy like myself. You know, jeez buddy, what have I ever done to you to make you want to re-arrange my corpuscles like that? Not only were my bones and glands and cuticles hurt, so were my feelings.

It wasn’t long before our fairly feeble offense found itself with another fourth and long. Back on to the field I scuttled, and I can now confess, four decades later, that I was quite pleased that our punter shanked his kick out of bounds, instantly ending the play. Well done, dude whose name I’ve long since forgotten!

On the bus home that afternoon, I realized very clearly—I was a basketball player. (I was fine by then. If that kid had really hit me, I might have gone straight into Theater!)

So you parents of six year old boys, what are you gonna say when your son asks you in two or six or ten years if he can play football? If you say yes, what will that do to your insurance? What will that do to your peace of mind, knowing he could, at any time, on any play, in any game, blow up a knee? Or get his brain squished up against his skull?

I don’t think football’s death knell is ringing. Those who opine such may be a bit melodramatic. But change is on the way. In my day, most parents didn’t even blink about granting permission to play football. Now, blinking will be common. The forces on a football field are fearsome and ferocious. Other boys are gonna be out there trying to knock your boy’s block off. You good with that? Ω

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