City Of Reno Wants Your Input On Designing Sustainable Growth
This is from a press release from Reno Connect. Unfortunately, the information does not appear on the City website yet. If anyone from the City is reading, please post the press releases somewhere where I can find them so that I can refer people to them online rather than reproduce the whole damn thing here. And what’s with all the tabs and spaces in the messages?
Reno City Press Release:
The American Institute of Architects Northern Nevada has received a grant from its National Chapter to have a “Sustainable Design Assessment Team,” examine seven counties in northern Nevada for the purpose of drafting a plan utilizing “best practices” to address issues dealing with growth in our region.
And they want your input–at least they say the do. This event, including the public meetings and workshops, will be held during the week of September 25, 2006. The Cities of Reno and Sparks, along with Washoe County, are supporting this effort.
The assessment will consist of a group of local and national experts who will examine the area and then facilitate the workshops and help draft the plan. Local stakeholders, including citizens, are being asked to participate. The major areas to be examined include; water quantity, water quality, land use, transportation, energy, as well as sustainable economic development.
The schedule is as follows:
September 25: Expert panel will:
- Tour Truckee (including downtown) and Donner Lake
- Participate in Aerial Flight of Northern Nevada
- Examine Lake Tahoe
- 7-9 PM: Public Meeting: Kings Beach Conference Center
September 26: Expert panel will:
- 8- 3 PM: Meet with Truckee/Tahoe Stakeholders at the King’s Beach Conference
Center. - 7-9 PM: First Public Meeting at McKinley Arts and Cultural Center
September 27: Expert panel will:
- 9-5 PM: Meet with Reno/Sparks Stakeholders at TMCC in the Red Mountain Building.
- 6:30-10 PM: Team Process and Work Session
September 28: Expert panel will:
- 8:30-6:30 PM: Team Work Sessions
- 7-9PM: Public Presentation
For more information please contact Ric Licata, AIA Northern NV @ 750-8852 or Terri Hendry
Juvenile Diabetes: A Worthy Cause
Its time for the big push: The Reno JDRF Walk for The Cure is only a month away and Team Discontents needs your money! We have acheived about 1/3 of our total fundraising goal of $3,500. We’ll take whatever you can afford, even if its only a dollar. Donate Now. Its also a creative way of giving John Ensign a kick in the ass for voting against stem cell research.
Watch Gonzaga basketball star Adam Morrison discuss his life with Type 1 diabetes (juvenile diabetes). Morrison was diagnosed at the age of 24 and must check his blood sugar numerous times a day and carefully monitor everything he eats. Like many children diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, my family member was diagnosed at a very young age–she was only three years old. She and her family face daily challenges you and I can’t imagine. Having type 1 diabetes increases her risk for many serious complications including heart disease (cardiovascular disease), blindness (retinopathy), nerve damage (neuropathy), and kidney damage (nephropathy).
Please help by donating to the JDRF whose research has funded many medical and disease management advances that make it possible for children to grow up to play basketball and otherwise live reasonably normal lives like Adam Morrison.
September 11th Is Here Again
I dread this time of year. I dread the politics of retribution, and while some of it is well done, I dread the inevitable earnest but reproduced memorial efforts, I dread the competitive hysteria of fear and suffering that seems to surface in the days and weeks leading up to the anniversary, this year more than most. But most of all, I dread the memories that come with it.
For those of you who don’t know, I was living in Northern Virginia during the fall of 2001. Annandale is a city about seven miles south of the Pentagon and steeped in Revolutionary and Civil War history. It originated in 1685 when an Englishman by the name of Col. William H. Fitzhugh whose descendants were cousins to the Lees (they named a son after him) and relatives by marriage to the Washington family, purchased over 24,000 acres of land from the Virginia government in Jamestown. The Fitzhughs named the land “Ravensworth” which eventually became a tobacco plantation and is home to the legendary “Backlick Road.” (Okay, that’s an exaggeration but the name is hilarious and provided a lot of material during Marv Albert’s back biting incident).
I actually moved to the Washington area in my 20s because I’m a complete history geek and wanted to be close the battlefields, monuments and museums with which the Washington D.C. area is filled. This patriotic geekdom has been passed down through my family for generations with a tradition of military and government service that still runs strong. My family’s service currently includes a brother, a sister, and a cousin serving as active duty military personnel in the Army, Marines and the Army National Guard, and another family member played an integral role in the rebuilding of Baghdad at the beginning of the occupation. I spent over ten years in the area surrouding the Nation’s Capitol experiencing our nation’s history first hand, exploring the battlefields of the Civil and Revolutionary Wars and the colonial settlements and committing what was lost and gained on those fields and settlements to my memory and to my heart. Doubt my geekdom? A day of fun for me meant taking the bus and metro to Arlington Cemetery which is one of my favorite places to be on earth besides Monticello near Charlottesville, which is more of a weekend trip. I can’t surround myself enough in the intelligence and fiery passion of Thomas Jefferson and the tragic and somehow romantic despair of Robert E. Lee whose home was confiscated to house the Cemetery. I have visited Arlington Cemetery at least thirty times and Monticello close to twenty. I even dated someone in the Old Guard stationed at Fort Myer, which borders the back side of the Cemetery.
Government issued headstone in Section 31 looking east toward Washington Monument.
September used to be my favorite month of the year in Virginia. Summer and its unbearable sticky heat could never end quickly enough for me. I anticipated fall’s promise of relief from the heat like it was Christmas. I used to buy the September Washingtonian to read up on the best new places to spend my fall weekends and then wait to feel the tell-tale crispness in the evening air that signaled the eminent bronzing of Virginia. But since the fall of 2001, I no longer rejoice at the coming of fall– fall has been ruined forever and I moved away to forget what happened to my adopted home.
Living in such close proximity to the nation’s capitol is like living in Carson City to some extent–almost everyone you know works for the government in some form or another. Annandale is a seemingly sleepy and diverse suburb of Washington D.C., just “inside the beltway” as the pundits say, but far enough away that you can forget from time to time that you only live fifteen miles from the Whitehouse. Its home to “Koreatown” and large Asian (Korean 7% and Vietnamese 6%) and Hispanic communities (15%) and is sandwiched between two much large Virginia cities–Alexandria and Arlington (home to the Pentagon). And I loved almost every minute I lived there until that day.
How can I convey the fear and disbelief I felt upon hearing that the Pentagon was bombed that day? The building my uncle, who was stationed there at the time, constantly described as the safest building on the earth. What were we to make of the planes circling above our heads near Dulles Airport—the airport from which the then missing American Airlines Flight 77 took off and crashed into the Pentagon and rumors of another missing plane? Or of the F-16s screaming back and forth across the sky? Knowing that my place of work housed smallpox and anthrax only exasperated the chaos I felt. The phones (cell and land) were unusable so it was nearly impossible to check on whether your friends and family who worked at the Department of Justice or the State Department, or the Pentagon were alright, or any other building reported as bombed erroneously or not because nobody knew what was going on. The only reliable form of communication was email so I spent the day fielding desperate email messages from my friends and family from other parts of the country. People spent the day trying to line up places to stay incase they couldn’t make it home because of the traffic or the blockades. So much was unknown and all we could do was try and stay calm as the world around us seemed to be falling apart. We were under attack.
And for weeks and months after the attack, nothing was normal. I drove by the gaping wound in the center of the Pentagon, the very symbol of the security of our nation, almost every day. It was an open sore that screamed out the country’s vulnerability to me as nothing ever has before or since. The snipers and the tanks camped out daily on the Pentagon helicopter pad and roof just off Interstate 395 North, and when you got off the Metro on the National Mall to go see an exhibit at the National Gallery of Art after it was reopened, there were tanks and soldiers with M-16s and M60s patrolling the intersections. We were forever a target.
It was that sense of living in the middle of a great big bulls-eye that ultimately drove me away from the city I loved. My yearning to see real mountains and to be near my family once again became irresistible. My frustration with the traffic and the workaholic character of my adopted home became convenient excuses to leave. But the real reason I left is because I could not stand to see my city afraid or to be afraid in my city. And it was only a year later when the D.C. Sniper exploded out of nowhere that people could finally let their pent up fear and hysteria loose because the stoicism of patriotism had absolutely nothing to do with it.
I still go back to my former home at least once a year, and it’s still a place I love. But now I visit in spring–never in fall.
I won’t be watching any of the televised memorials or docudramas, because I don’t want anyone to tell me how I should feel about that day five years ago ans what’s happened since. I’ll be trying not to think about it for once as I suspect many others will do as well.
If you do want to participate in a event, here’s a list.
Yucca Mountain As An Economic Boon
I was actually curious to see what the Battleborn Opinion News folks had to say about TASC being tosssed from the November 7th ballot and found this interesting piece on using Yucca Mountain to secure some economic benefits
I guess what I find most interesting about the post is that Chuck Muth thinks giving in on Yucca Mountain is something we should consider as a way to futher develop the state economy, but he won’t entertain the idea that investing more in the children of Nevada might do as much or more for the state economy. We are all in favor of making the best choices as far as education spending and blaming the teachers’ union and insisting on vouchers as a save-all solution doesn’t solve anything. Further investment in the state’s education system must be made if we are to produce a workforce capable of creating a dynamic state economy, not to mention one that could actually work in such high level industries as those required by the supposed economic opportunities in technology and science that a completed Yucca Mountain would provide.
I do agree with Muth on the No Child Left Behind Act. Education standards should not be dictated by the federal government and aspiring to meet minimum standards is not the way to improve anything.
Jack Carter In The Hospital
Jack Carter was hospitalized in Las Vegas on Thursday with severe colitius and is said to be doing well and looking forward to getting back on the campaign trail. His father Jimmy took his place on the campaign trail this weekend:
The elder Carter, 81, took his son’s place onstage at a rally at a Mexican Independence Day gathering on Sunday, telling the crowd in Spanish to register and then vote for Democrats. Jack Carter was forced to cancel campaign activities after becoming ill Sept. 3, Jones said.
Jesus In The Sky and The Ball Babe Controversy
Did you guys see the Jesus hot air balloon floating over Reno this morning? It reminded me of the “Buddy Christ,” a less depressing saviour created by George Carlin’s Cardnial Glick in Kevin Smith’s film Dogma. I don’t know about you, but I felt much safer knowing that my buddy christ was watching over me today.
Have you been watching the U.S. Open? Sharapova just won. You’ve seen her Nike commercial featuring the West Side Story song “I’m So Pretty?”Its a great commercial and sort of ironic considering the small controversy that emerged earlier this week at the NYTimes U.S. Open blog over the official ballgirl uniforms designed by Ralph Lauren. I don’t see a problem with the new uniforms except for the prominence of the Ralph Lauren logo–they’re fit and the cut mirror the standard women’s athletic gear worn by most of the competing athletes. Others don’t have such favorable opinions of them. I can see the beef about how different they are than the ballboy uniforms, but that says more about male fashion than anything else. Some of the male players are constantly re-adjusting their clothing because of the baggy cut–think Andy Roddick. Its seems like it would be irritating.
The uniforms are the same ones worn by ballpersons last year, but this year, some assholes catcalled one of the ballgirls during the Hewitt-Gasquet match and now its a controversy. The bad behavior of some male fans doesn’t have anything to do with the design of the uniforms. Officials should have ejected the leering fans from the stadium after their first warning–its inappropriate to force the ballgirl to leave. That’s punishing the young woman because some idiots can’t control themselves. Great job U.S. Open!
Time To Wake Up Jim Gibbons
The absolutely genius Gleaner catches the Gibbons campaign with their designer fatiques around their knees, showing no understanding of what is actually happening today in the United States. On his site, the Gibbons campaign misrepresents text from the 9/11 Commission report to justify Gibbons’ position on Iraq. The Gibbons site claims that the 9/11 Commission Report documented “numerous contacts” between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, but the Gibbons campaign neglected to include the fact that the report also concludes that there was never a colloborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Uh, duh! That’s like saying I go to bed with my gay neighbor down the hall because we wave hello whenever we pass each other in the hall. Perhaps they didn’t know that the Senate Intelligence committee released a report today also dismissing that a relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda existed? I guess its time to update the website, but we’re awfully glad you haven’t so far.
I guess Mr. Gibbons hasn’t been watching or reading the news over the past few days (not to mention from a few years ago). He didn’t even have to read the articles–their headlines would have told him all he needed to know. Does he really think the citizens of Nevada are that stupid? Or is he that stupid? Either way, there is no way such a complete and utter moron deserves the governorship of this great state.
Here are just a few news items from which he might have found out that the 9/11 Commission Report and the Senate Intelligence Committee agree that there was NO connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.
- CNN, June 16, 2004.
- Washington Post, June 17, 2004.
- Bush press conference, August 21, 2006.
- ABC News Bush interview with Katie Couric, September 6th, 2006.
- Baltimore Sun, September 8th, 2006.
- CNN, September 8th, 2006.
- USA Today, September 8th, 2006.
Forget it, here’s the whole google news list of articles just for today.
Nobelity
>Update: The distributor does not screen Nobelity in theaters. They want to use screenings to raise money for the ogranization through hosted public screenings. So I am going to ask The Great Basin Film Society if they would be willing to host a screening of the movie. (They are screening Blow-Up on Monday by the way). We only have to get 50 people to attend at $10 a pop. I’ll let you know what they say. And if you have any other suggested venues, let us know.
The minx thinks she has found an anecdote to her recent depressive state and is going to try and convince the Riverside Theater to hold a screening of Nobelity, a documentary written and directed by Turk Pipkin “…which looks at the world’s most pressing problems through the eyes of nine distinguished Nobel laureates. Filmed across the U.S. and Europe, in India and Africa, Nobelity follows Turk Pipkin’s personal journey in learning about these problems and what we can do about them.”
Sounds inspirational doesn’t it?
And while the laureates of Nobelity don’t claim to have all the answers, they do all agree that we need less disparity between haves and have-nots in the world, more international cooperation, less spending on weapons of war, and more dedication of resources to health care and education.
As individuals, each of us can make a difference in many ways: by volunteering our time and energy, by contributing to critical causes, by learning more about these problems and discussing them with others, and by insisting that the media, our governments, and the businesses we support each play their parts as well.
As Desmond Tutu says says in Nobelity, “The sea is actually made up of drops of water. What you do, where you are, is of significance.”
Who better to remind us that the world is both much bigger than we imagine and much smaller than we think than these world treasures?
Joseph Rotblat
Richard Smalley
Harold Varmus
Jody Williams
Amartya Sen
Desmond Tutu
Steven Weinberg
Ahmed Zewail
Nobelity is not just a documentary, its also a project that raises money for the causes specified by the Nobel Laureates: Amnesty International, Habitat for Humanity, The Green Belt Movement, Oxfam, International Campaign to Ban Landmines, Pugwash, The Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative, Doctor’s Without Borders, Union of Concerned Scientists, and Public Library of Science
You can view the film’s trailer here.
Reno and Beyond: Do What I Say, Not What I Do Twerps
- Uithoven calls Dina Titus the “…most vicious, cut-throat campaigner perhaps in Nevada history.” Dude, why don’t you tell us what you really think?
- No one disputes the fact that Gibbons didn’t know Earle Dixon, the BLM whistleblower, they’re just saying that its at least partly his fault Dixon’s supervisors dismissed him illegally.
- So its okay to slaughter cows, sheep, and pigs because they don’t majestically roam the prairie? Or is the rule that you shouldn’t slaughter something you can’t ride? I’m just asking. That’s more than the House is doing.
- The minx’s former governor was in Las Vegas to help himself and the Dina Titus and Tessa Hafen campaigns. Mark Warner is a bit of a political miracle worker. In Virginia, a state not all that unlike Nevada (In know that sounds strange but its true–trust me), he won over enough independents and Repulicans to win the election and then proceeded to lower income taxes by raising sales and cigarette taxes and reformed the tax code so that the state could keep its exemplary bond rating. On top of that, he poured money into education and reformed it at all levels, developed Virginia as a new center for technology, actually prepared his state to combat terrorism, brokered a compromise to get a large transportation bill through a notoriously difficult legislature, and chaired the National Governor’s Association. I think the presidential matchup in 2008 could be Mitt Romney and Warner–two CEO governors with appeal that crosses parties.
- Nevada Up North produces a new Ensign ad containing a since corrected fact (see Kevin Drum bullet below) and other still correct facts.
- Nevada scores an F on affordability, according to “Measuring Up 2006: The National Report Card on Higher Ed.” But don’t go all crazy because so did 43 other states. Nevada has actually improved in all other areas of the report card with the exception of affordability and participation which remained the same. You can view the state report here.
- Correction to this chart was published by Kevin Drum. The picture is not as bad, but its not Christmas in September either.
- To do: The Balloon Race Jazz & Wine Walk. Just pick a place downtown to start between 2-5pm. It’ll only cost you $15 to get loaded and flirt with a balloon racer so he’ll turn on his flame for you over and over and over. Oh yeah, the Great Reno Balloon Race is this weekend too for those of you who think getting up in the middle of the night, fighting with other half-asleep drivers for crappy parking a mile way on Washington Street, and then stumbling blindly through Rancho San Rafael Park to see balloons blink to the theme from Close Encounters of The Third Kind at the Dawn Partrol is great fun. I won’t see you there–I’ll be sleeping.
- Say what you want about our cute Katie, she got Bush to say “One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror” out loud on national TV. Word.
- Tony Blair is on his way out. Who will get Bush’s sodas for him while he’s trying to mack on Angela Merkel at world affairs functions?
- Right on mom and dad. You’re jokers, you’re smokers, you’re midnight tokers, you’re sure don’t want to hurt no one. Too bad about the kids.
- Good news! The minx can take her KY-Jelly with her on her next trip to Mexico thanks to the revised flight security rules. Go TSA!
- In case you were curious, this is what I studied in grad school. Its a miracle I can still speak English.
The Latest Celebrity Not Visiting Reno: Tara Reid
Okay, I have to admit it. I don’t know whether Tara Reid was in Las Vegas recently or not but I’m sure this girl next door gone slutty has been there numerous times, and ever since seeing her public humiliation at the hands of a smirking Paris Hilton recorded on the above video, I’ve been worried about her. The sheer numbers of aspiring D, C, and B-list celebrities that have been run over by the Paris “I’m famous because I’m rich and show my coochie in public” train of self-contented pleasure would fill up the Lawlor Events Center, but Tara Reid is an silly, vulnerable used and abused party hound who just wants to be liked as long as she has a drink in her hand. She demonstrated this week after week on the disastrous Taradise. Sure sometimes we’re not able to understand her earnest efforts to show us that she really is smarter than she seems and drinks less than she does because of the alcohol-induced slurring and stumbling, but all she really needs is an intervention. Where are her goddamn friends for christ’s sake? At Hyde? How’s they get in?
I actually know someone who ran into Tara while she was filming Taradise in Croatia, one of the newest celebrity hotspots. Tara and her crew quickly installed themselves in an improvised VIP lounge and scouted out the hottest dudes, two of which just happened to be my friend’s cousins. They herded the Croatian dudes around Tara so that they could worshipfully dance in the circle of her drunken approval and kept all the women far away. The funny thing is that the club they were in that night is considered a tourist trap by the locals and they soon left to someplace cooler.
Spending time in Reno would be a great choice for Tara–she would be the A-list celebrity and maybe she could learn to slow down a little here. She could wear one of those shirts that says “I’ll get her done….tomorrow” as a reminder of the toll her party life has taken on her personal and professional life. And all the drunk kids at Vino would worship her like they would an older and cooler drunk sister whose boobs fall out of her tops every once in a while. But more importantly, I think Reno would cut Tara a break. Hell, practically everyone here smokes, drinks, slurs, and dances like sluts. Nobody would bat an eyelash if her boob accidentally fell out of her dress here (as long as she was on 4rth, 2nd, or West Streets). In fact, in Reno, someone would tell her that her boob was exposed rather than letting her strut around town that way. That’s what I like to call Reno Nice. Tara could use some of that.
Can I just say that the saddest part of the whole club scene above is that Tara Reid and Paris Hilton wanted to be in a club playing the them to Footloose.
