Opinion

Solitude is an essential component to good health and well-being, so they say, but too much solitude, let me tell you, can be burdensome. I cite solitary confinement as the cruelest of punishments. Washing ashore onto deserted Island is considered by most to be an unfortunate turn of fate. But pandemic solitude has its own unique personality.

Unfortunately, our culture still possesses a long-held and broadly-shared deeply seated historic "understanding" about the never-ending growing number of people who are innately (by some deity and/or gene) unchangeable with their inferior status. A caste-based view about humankind.

To All Northern Nevada Residents, Effective July 1, 2020 NV Energy raised the fees for a customer disconnect/reconnect. From the original application, it is evident that these fees were increased in order to offset the $5 million dollar revenue decrease requested. Now, NV Energy seeks to fulfill an additional $120 million revenue decrease. While this reduction in revenue benefits residential customers in the short-term, the recent request continues to penalize Northern Nevadans from making needed repairs to their homes electrical systems.

To my mind there are at least four ways to ponder religion, you can believe in God, you can not believe in God, you can wonder if there is a God, or you can believe God & Mother Nature are different words for the same thing. I happen to fall into the last camp, though I would never try to persuade anybody to come over to my way of thinking.

Just for fun I decided to write a short story and preview it here in this fine family journal. It's called, A Pictorial Story Of One Long Party On The Tropical Island Of Maui '73-'83, and it's a true story, mostly.

A group of advocates from the Carson City and Reno Chapter of Citizens’ Climate Education participated in a virtual climate conference and lobbying event last month.

Five months of daily communication with 'Huckleberry' has paid dividends. We are now fast friends. Huck was born a couple years ago right here on my deck, and in fact, he fledged straight into a sleeping bag I placed for him on the driveway below.

"When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; a culture-death is a clear possibility."

Professor Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Discourse in the Age of Show Business.

I've long believed that balance is the key to living. Balancing how we treat ourselves and others makes all the difference between harmony and discord.

Since March of this year, the need for balance has become more clear to me than ever before. Our initial responses to the coronavirus outbreak and the death of George Floyd couldn't have been more imbalanced if we had tried.

“Dr.” Sisolak the good Democrat: racism is a public health crisis.

https://carsonnow.org/story/08/06/2020/nevada-governor-proclaims-racism-...

http://gov.nv.gov/News/Proclamations/2020/Racism,_as_a_Public_Health_Cri...

With this proclamation, the governor has perpetrated the most egregious insult of all Nevadans. He has also perpetrated the most egregious assault on fact, law and common sense.

What might Mark Twain say about a serious proposal in China to allow for two husbands? First let us take a look at the proposal, recommended by a professor of economics at Fudan University in this summer of 2020.

It is my honor and pleasure to offer this endorsement of Maurice White for Carson City Supervisor, Ward 2. It takes only a moment talking with him to realize that Mo has outstanding qualifications for this office. He is passionate about Carson City, and he is very knowledgeable of local issues, down to the minutest details. He has the patience and friendly disposition to discuss them to any depth of understanding that you would care to tolerate. And he’s equally able to discuss them at the policy and philosophical level, if that’s your preference.

Hello, if I may introduce myself, my name is Ovi, I'm a Covid virus who has learned English and am about to publish a tell-all book about my life as a Covid virus who has gone to the other side. Humans think we don't have brains, but we do. We disguise our brains as effluent, and with the help of 20-200 vision, we can spot a impaired immune system from across a crowded room.

I am a desperate parent trying to find help. I’m a scared parent wanting to start an open & constructive conversation about our schools in the fall. My public comments have been silenced or not acknowledged. I’m not alone, I’m in the majority & we should have the choice to choose what’s right for our kids.

I think GOV SISOLAK should at least, give us, NEVADA parents & teachers, the CHOICE on whether we want our kids to return or not return to school full time. It should be OUR choice and decision.

Don't you love pithy quotes? Me too. I have a plug hat full of them, and I pull one out every now and again to give myself a lift. So I thought I'd share a few of them with you here today in this fine family journal, and hope that one of them might give you a lift too.

We need to learn how to live with the certainty of coronavirus. On May 20th, I penned an article titled “Lessons learned from coronavirus.” We are still learning. We know that fatalities have decreased since May; mostly because our elders and people with underlying health conditions have taken the required precautions. Look around you. Most people in Carson City are wearing masks, and keeping 6 feet apart. But life must go on...

I've never had to worry about illnesses, because I've always known how I was going to die. I would step into an open manhole while out running and get swept out to sea, however that's not likely to happen because I'm no longer running. But it did happen to a Brazilian girl last week, and she lived to tell about it.

A number of Nevada’s rural county commissions have passed or are considering resolutions expressing their opposition to mail-in voting. Taking their cue from President Trump, they base their opposition on claims that mail-in voting is rife with fraud. It’s no coincidence that these exclusively Republican officials feel threatened by mail-in voting, and it has nothing to do with fraud, real or imagined.

Don’t spew your hate at me.

On Saturday, July 4, 2020, Independence Day, I was on the Nevada State Capitol Grounds in Carson City. This is where I was the target of a hostile verbal assault: “Get out of here! You don’t belong here! You’re not welcome here!”

Golf was invented or discovered, whichever you like, in Scotland in the mid-1400's, and became hugely popular almost overnight. Golf in Scotland in 1460 was so popular that one could not walk to the post office without getting hit by a golf ball.

I recently watched the critically acclaimed and award-winning 1998 film "Saving Private Ryan" on television the other evening.

I'm not a combat veteran, or a military veteran of any stripe for that matter, and that movie still gives me chills each time I see it.

I believed it when some veterans reported experiencing emotional flashbacks while viewing "Saving Private Ryan" on the big screen. The film's combat scenes were so disturbing that they triggered post-traumatic stress reactions from those who had lived through the real thing.

As we recite the Lord's prayer, it's time to look a little deeper. Presented below is a version of the meaning of each of the lines of the Lord’s prayer.
1) Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Before the pandemic arrived I used to get to read the Declaration of Independence as Mark Twain, orchestrated to a Marine Corps flyover upon finishing with these words, "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our Lives, our Fortunes, our sacred Honor." Va-voom!

Well, here we are, alive and mostly well, after almost a third of a year without sports. I didn't think it was possible. Thank goodness I've had Mark Twain to keep me in a state of moderate good cheer.

For over four decades I have formally observed hundreds of successful (and unsuccessful) candidacies expressing hopes, ideas, and plans for the voting-market to evaluate as possible policies and governance. All candidates —especially at this time and place — are to be complimented for having the chutzpah required for this endeavor. Running for office is too often an unpleasant challenge. Period.

It’s been months of challenging circumstances for our community, businesses, families and schools, but I saw us beginning to emerge from the darkness. Then, without warning, the horrific death of George Floyd reignited the unresolved wounds of racism, police use of force, and unequal treatment of minorities in this country. The frustrated public demanded answers, change, and resolution, not later but now.

Yesterday while out for a walk, I ran into four middle school boys on skateboards and hailed them, "Okay, men, I know you've been out of school, but I've got a pop-quiz for you."

My father was of the Model T Generation, born the year the Titanic went down, 1912. His was a sober generation, living through the flu pandemic of 1918, Prohibition, the Great Depression and WWII. If that won't sober up a generation what will?

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

The first time I had ever heard "Taps" played in person, I was visiting Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, VA, just outside of Washington, D.C. A Navy funeral was concluding and bugler "Taps" signaled the sailor's final farewell.