“Go? I think not. My sons and daughters do not harm Hagrid on my command. But I cannot deny them fresh meat when it wanders so willingly into our midst. Good-bye, friend of Hagrid.” — Aragog from “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” (2002) Cara Linton made her final check-in with the base as…

Never did I believe a fish could have a worse time of it than one chased around a skillet in a Virginia City kitchen—but that was before coming upon the curious chronicle of the Devil’s Hole pupfish. These fellers–if ever there was a tribe of uncommonly unfortunate fish, might be the most put-upon creatures ever…

Now, friends, if you’ve ever tried to keep a roof over your head and four walls around your supper table, you know the housing market is as unpredictable as a goose in a thunderstorm. The well-meaning folks over at the Sierra Nevada Realtors released their March 2025 ledger on the comings and goings of homes…

By a Disbelieving Observer of Man’s Gall and His Corporate Appetite We find ourselves in a fix as fine as molasses in mid-July. The mercury’s climbing in Nevada, and just as sure as the Devil sets his rocking chair out in the Great Basin this time of year, NV Energy is once again rattling the…

By a Citizen Who’s Seen a Mule Pull a Plow Quicker Than This Bunch Can Pass a Law It appears that Congress—God bless it and save it from itself—is once again proving that when it comes to helping regular folks chase the American dream, it’s all hat and no cattle. A fresh report from the…

300 Acres, No Comment, and a Whole Heap of Dirt to Move Honest, I don’t pretend to know what sort of cipherin’ they do up there in Redmond, Wash., but it appears that Microsoft, a kingpin in computer contraptions, has quietly bought itself a nice, wide patch of Northern Nevada sagebrush—300.7 acres of it, to…

Don’t go gettin’ me wrong, I ain’t one to cast stones at a feller’s faith, but there’s a mighty peculiar thing about some churchgoin’ folks, ‘cludin’ me. They’ll traipse into the pews every Sunday, singin’ hymns loud enough to wake a hibernatin’ bear and quotin’ Scripture like they’re auditionin’ for St. Peter. They’ve got the…

Millions Vanish, and Powers That Be Are Scare’t Now I reckon there ain’t a soul west of the Rockies who hasn’t heard tell of them new-fangled fiber wires–meant to zip words and pictures through the air like greased lightning, or so they say. But in the fine town of Lovelock–where tumbleweeds roll straighter than the…

I am young, sixty-something, who keeps count?—yet I have seen the horrors of the green frontier. We mow, not yet broken, because the grass grows relentlessly, like an enemy that knows no truce. The backyard is my trench, my battlefield, and I am its weary soldier, armed with a push mower that rattles like a…

Without aiming to startle nobody, I recently found myself ensnared in a war of words with Mrs. Leggs, a woman-friend of stout East Coast conviction and a voice that could lullaby a White Shark to sleep. It all started innocently enough—she asked me who I reckoned might win the ongoing war, betwixt Ukraine and Russia.…