But Traffic’s Thinnin’ Out It appears—though Heaven alone knows how the newspapers still manage to find their way into our outhouses—that Nevada is no longer the booming crossroads of other people’s problems. Only 8.8 percent of the abortions performed in the silver-plated state last year were for folks who’d come from elsewhere, down a whopping…

Not one to go flingin’ suspicions like a drunkard tossin’ cards at a saloon cat, but when a fellow turns up deceased on the shores of Lake Mead—with no boat, no gear, and no reason for being anywhere near the water—it tends to raise a few eyebrows in any town worth its salt and pepper.…

Now, I don’t mean to rile anybody up more than necessary–but I must ask—why–in the name of my wife’s sugar cookies, do we need Washington’s fingers fiddling in our local affairs regarding libraries and museums? Last I checked, bookshelves, storytime, and dusty dioramas were matters of local concern. And yet here comes Senator Jacky Rosen,…

The Yurok elder, Sandy Sanderson, sat by the fire. The flames flickered against the walls of the sweat lodge, and we sat close, drawn in by his voice, low and steady like the current. “You ever hear of P’eh?” he asked. “Means fish in my native tongue.” We shook our heads. We were boys, maybe…

Reporting from the Back Pew of a Smoke-Filled Tabernacle Las Vegas is shedding its skin faster than a sidewinder in summer. In a town where fortunes turn on the clink of dice and the whir of a slot reel, two great institutions have packed up shop within weeks of each other—one a house of God,…

Well, if ever there was a day that proved legislative bodies are more than capable of making a mess of things before lunch and still have time to sweep it under the rug by supper, it was in the fine state of Nevada. The Nevada Assembly, bless their muddled hearts, managed to send up not…

While I ain’t no architect nor property tycoon, even a blind horse can see that it’s high time we quit building fresh barns when the old ones still hold hay in the rafters. In parched and sunbaked lands of Northern Nevada last year, a curious thing happened—business folks with more common sense than vanity bought…

The Crowd and the Ruckus They Raised A gaggle of self-righteous moral mechanics, with more signs than sense, blew into town Saturday to holler at the sky and each other about the supposed tyranny of one Donald J. Trump and Governor Joe Lombardo. The crowd, numbering some 2,000—though half of them looked lost and the…

As Federal Fireworks Getting Lit Now, I don’t aim to sound dramatic—though I often succeed when I try—but you might say Nevada’s statehouse is about to turn into a regular bee swarm come Monday morning. Over a hundred bills are gettin’ stacked like cordwood on the desks of lawmakers in the Assembly and Senate, with…

Now, dear reader, let me tell you a tale, not of romance or personal misadventures, but of a young woman and a desert silence that stretched over forty years until the long arm of truth reached clear through the grave. In the spring of 1981—back when hairstyles were higher than hopes and polyester ruled the…