The Old Blog in the Desert

It was May the Fourth, and feeling particularly Jedi-like, I strutted through the galaxy–okay, my local coffee shop–with my lightsaber-shaped straw and a “May the Fourth Be With You” T-shirt.

I’d practiced my best Yoda impression all morning, muttering, “Mmm, coffee, I must have.”

The barista, unimpressed, just raised an eyebrow.

Stepping up to order, I channeled my inner Obi-Wan. “A coffee, you will make me,” I said, waving my hand dramatically, hoping for a laugh.

But then—whoosh—something weird happened. The barista’s eyes widened, and the young woman clutched her throat and started gasping.

My hand was still outstretched, and I froze. Had I caused the barista to choke with my mind?

The other customers stared, wondering if Darth Vader had taken over my body. The barista, thankfully, coughed and waved it off, muttering about allergies.

Quietly, I slunk to a corner booth, vowing never to pretend to do a Jedi mind trick again, and as I sipped my coffee, I heard a kid nearby whisper, “Mom, is that guy a Sith?”

I sank low in my seat.

May the Fourth, ha! More like may the force save me from further embarrassment.

I ain’t pretendin’ to know all the highfalutin’ principles of taxation, depreciation, amortization, or bureaucratic incantation. But I know this–when a man tells you taxes are theft with one side of his mouth and says folks ought to pay to use the roads with the other, you’d best keep one hand on your wallet and the other on your common sense.

Such a man is Ed Lawson, the current mayor of Sparks–a town not known for sparking much but budget shortfalls these days. Mayor Lawson, who’s been piloting the good ship Rail City since 2020, is now bemoanin’ what he calls “the most regressive property tax system in America.”

That’s a bold claim coming from a fellow who thinks taxes are a crime, but toll booths are a civic duty. I’m guessin’ should you slap a price tag on freedom and call it a “user fee,” it don’t feel so larcenous.

According to His Honor, Sparks is about $12 million short of making ends meet, and over in Reno, they’re projecting a $24 million hole in their britches. So what’s the plan? Fire a mess of staffers, skip some fire and police calls, and keep tellin’ folks their quality of life is taking a temporary vacation—destination unknown.

“We don’t get to print money,” Lawson says. No–but you get to vote on how much to take from the folks who earned it.

Now, let me explain the situation as best I can without falling asleep– Nevada’s got this peculiar way of taxing property. The tax rate don’t reset when the house changes hands, and instead of appreciating with the value, it depreciates 1.5 percent each year for 50 years–like a horse that gets slower every mile but keeps fetching a higher price.

So a fancy $2.5 million mansion might get taxed less than a modest new home if it’s older than sin and twice as dusty. Naturally, some legislators want to fix this.

Assemblymember Natha Anderson, for one, is championing a constitutional amendment–Assembly Joint Resolution 1—which would hit the reset button on property tax rates at the time of sale. You sell your house–the buyer pays full freight.

You stay put–you keep your sweet little tax break. The plan is to pump millions back into public coffers, hire more police, and maybe even patch up a pothole.

But wouldn’t you know it, the plan’s got more opposition than a cat in a dog parade. The Nevada Realtors don’t like it. Conservative groups don’t like it. And they all seem to agree on one thing–government should cut their fat before it comes after skinny wallets.

Here’s the kicker–while Lawson scolds the property tax system for being regressive, he’s fond of something called “tolls,” which is a tax you pay to use a road you already bought once with your gas tax, and again with your registration, and maybe thrice with your soul. In the old days, we called that highway robbery.

Nowadays, we call it “infrastructure funding.” So there you have it.

A mayor who says taxation is theft–unless you’re stealing from travelers one car at a time. A legislature wantin’ to fix a broken system by breaking it differently. And a citizenry that ain’t sure they’re bein’ protected or pickpocketed.

As for me, I prefer the old system–if a man builds himself a house, he oughtn’t be taxed half to death for the privilege of keeping it. And if the government can’t afford to mind the roads, maybe they should walk a few miles in our boots.

It appears that Mr. Elon Musk—part-time moonshotter, full-time futurist, and the only man alive who might sell you a spaceship over the internet–has started hiring bodies to build that long-awaited electric behemoth he calls the Tesla Semi.

In the yesteryear of 2017, the thunder-chariot got first trotted out like a prize bull at a county fair. Mr. Musk promised it would revolutionize the roads, turn diesel to dust, and have us all sipping lemonade while electric trucks carried our groceries cross-country without a puff of smoke. Trouble is, that ol’ promise got itself caught in a tumbleweed and blown clear into the next decade.

Fast-forward through a heap of delays, enough hiccups to shame a whiskey still, and just a single truck dropped into the hands of PepsiCo in 2022, who’d placed their order so long ago, they probably forgot they did. Until recently, Tesla had less than a hundred folks hammering away on this project–hardly enough to fix a stagecoach wheel, let alone build a convoy of mechanical giants.

But lo and behold, change is afoot in Storey County. Reports say that more than a thousand new hands are gettin’ wrangled into Tesla’s Gigafactory–a place that’s shaping up to be less factory and more frontier boomtown. They’ll start churning out the elusive electric haulers before the end of 2025 and plan to make up to 50,000 a year if the winds are fair.

Tesla’s now listing job openings like a gold rush saloon listing poker tables–engineers, testers, grease monkeys, and folks to keep things from catchin’ fire. And so the Semi may finally roll out of the mythic realm and into the mud-splattered, pothole-ridden Middle Earth.

In short, Mr. Musk’s dream might be late, but it’s showing up with reinforcements. And if that ain’t progress, then I’m a Methodist.

Here’s a tale that’d make a Gold Hill mule shake its head and roll its eyes back into its skull. It seems we’ve got a stretch of Nevada that’s gone from wide open to wide inviting—if you happen to be a foreign scoundrel with a knack for eluding borders, bullets, and basic decency.

Let us first tip our hats to Audencio Vazquez-Calletano, aged thirty-one, a man of rare persistence and questionable planning. Mr. Calletano, a Mexican national, has been booted from the U.S. three times—May of 2011, February of 2012, and just last June of 2024.

But like a bad penny or a persistent uncle, he keeps turning up. On April 14, the U.S. Border Patrol found him again, living near the dusty outpost of Searchlight, where presumably the air is thin and the patience of federal officers thinner still.

Now, Audencio ain’t just an overachiever in the illegal entry department–he’s got hisself a little California credential too–a felony for taking a vehicle without asking nice. If convicted this time around, he might be trading desert for the cozy confines of a federal cell for up to ten years, with a bonus $250,000 bill and three years of supervised contemplation.

But Mr. Calletano ain’t the whole show.

Step up for the next act in our traveling cavalcade of calamity–Jose Luis Castillo-Alvarez and Kevin Omar Cruz-Lima–two gents whose country of origin remains unsolved, like how Congress still draws a paycheck. From September 2024 to March of this year, these two industrious businessmen were allegedly busy as badgers, shuffling enough heroin, meth, fentanyl, and cocaine around Nevada to start a pharmaceutical empire.

And they weren’t exactly shy about security, either. When apprehended on March 27, they had on hand an AR15 rifle and a homebrew pistol because nothing says customer service like firepower and fentanyl. The law says they were also unlawfully present in the U.S.—fancy that! Alvarez, it seems, got deported back in 2020 but couldn’t resist the siren song of Nevada soil. Their trial kicks off June 30, and if the jury’s got their spectacles polished, these two could be enjoying the view from inside a penitentiary wall for life.

And finally, in what might be called a grim encore, the fine folks at Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Reno recently collared Luis Gomez, another Mexican national who, according to ICE, has a resume that includes sexual assault with a deadly weapon and kidnapping. That ain’t a good neighbor policy. Mr. Gomez has an administrative order of removal, and ICE says he’ll be shipped off “as soon as possible”—which in federal terms could mean anywhere from next week to the next geological epoch.

So, here we are–three stories, one common thread–men who cannot take a hint. One could get forgiven for thinking the border is less of a line and more of a revolving door, oiled by red tape and blessed with a concierge, asleep on the job.

Whilst I ain’t one to sound the alarm every time a tumbleweed rolls ‘cross the road or a stranger tips his hat too slowly, what happened Tuesday afternoon in the good scrublands of Lyon County has folks sharpening their glances and oiling the hinges on their screen doors.

At just about 4:27 in the post meridian–when most honest folks are either boiling beans or wondering if the sun’s gonna fry their garden again–the sheriff’s deputies were summoned to a home out yonder on Grassland Road. The call was about some goings-on that didn’t sit right with a young lady who had been out mindin’ her business and puttin’ shoe to the sidewalk.

Around 4:09 p.m., a white four-door carriage of the modern kind–one of them that look like a boiled egg with wheels–crept up on her. Inside were two grown white fellows, reckon thirty to forty in age, which is just about old enough to know better. One of ‘em sported a goatee, which is facial hair worn by men who either read too much poetry or not near enough, and the other wore a red shirt — a color known to inspire revolution and bulls.

Here’s where things tilt toward the peculiar. One of these fellas leaned out the window and asked the girl to pluck them a flower–a strange request for strangers to make and one that likely set off every common-sense bell in that girl’s head. To her credit, and I believe she deserves some, she did not tarry with flower-picking nor conversation–but lit out of there like a deer who’d heard a rifle’s bolt snap back.

The car rolled eastward toward whatever mischief or misunderstanding awaited it down Grassland Road. The Sheriff’s office says they’re sniffing around for video contraptions that might’ve caught sight of the odd scene and are encouraging any soul with a flicker of information–be it first-hand, second-hand, or off a porch camera — to ring them up at (775) 463-6620.

Now, I ain’t sayin’ the red-shirted gent and his goateed accomplice was up to villainy outright–maybe they’re just awkward suitors from a bygone century–but if you ask a child for a flower from a moving vehicle, don’t be surprised when you find the whole county lookin’ at you sideways.

Now, I ain’t sayin’ the good folks over at DOGE NEVADA are chasin’ windmills, but they are pokin’ their noses into the sort of affairs that make bureaucrats squirm like a cat in a rain barrel. Though they got no tether to Uncle Sam’s Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE NEVADA’s mission is about the same–sniffin’ waste out, fraud, and those curious little financial figments that somehow pass for public service.

The man with the magnifying glass is one Brandon Davis, who’s been keepin’ a keen eye on Nevada’s pocketbook from his perch in Las Vegas for over ten years. He reckons folks didn’t much care what the state was spendin’ on so long as the potholes weren’t eatin’ tires—but now, he says, it’s a “kitchen table issue.”

Reckon it must be, especially if that table’s missin’ a leg from budget cuts.

DOGE NEVADA has dug up some gold nuggets of foolishness–$12 million went to buildin’ a pickleball palace because nothin’ says “fiscal discipline” like subsidized paddle-whackin’ and $9.1 million for high-speed internet in Lovelock that never quite showed up—like a ghost train on a map that leads nowhere.

Davis, who don’t speak like a politician, which is to say, he makes sense, figures that kinda cash could be better used gettin’ folks off the sidewalks and into homes—or givin’ teachers enough of a wage that they don’t have to moonlight as Uber drivers.

Can’t say I disagree.

The DOGE team comes from tech and communication backgrounds, meaning they ain’t diggin’ with shovels but siftin’ through numbers with artificial intelligence and what-have-you. They’ve even got an anonymous tip line where the honest or fed-up can holler about shenanigans in government ledgers. Davis says some folks have been booted right outta their government chairs just for speakin’ truth to power, which is nothin’ new under the sun—but still a scandal.

Now, lest you suspect this all smells of politics, Davis says DOGE NEVADA has no party hat on—just individual donors, no strings. They’re non-partisan, which means they fire at foolishness wherever it sprouts, left, right, or sideways.

In a land built by gamblers and dreamers, it’s nice to see someone bettin’ on accountability, even if the odds ain’t great.

The late afternoon sun hung low over the university town of Arcata, casting long shadows from the four-story Arcata Hotel. I stood outside the entrance, waiting for my buddy Jake to pick me up for work.

The air smelled faintly of jasmine from the planters nearby, and the hum of traffic mixed with the occasional chirp of a sparrow. My knapsack rested by my feet, and I was thumbing a newspaper when the world turned upside down.

A piercing shriek cut through the air–followed by a crash that made my heart lurch. I looked up just in time to see a full-sized tube television hurtling out of a fourth-floor window, its power cord flapping like a useless tail.

It spun end over end, glinting in the sunlight, and I froze, my brain screaming to move, but my legs refusing to obey. The TV smashed into the pavement not two feet away, exploding into a mess of plastic, glass, and sparking wires. Shards skittered across the sidewalk.

“Holy—!” I yelped, stumbling backward.

My heart pounded like a drum, and I stared at the wreckage, trying to process what had just happened. A small crowd—hotel staff, a couple of guests, and a guy with a delivery clipboard—gathered nearby, all gaping at the scene.

From the window above, a woman’s voice bellowed, “And STAY OUT, you cheating piece of trash!”

I craned my neck to see a figure leaning out of room 403, her silhouette framed against the curtains. She was middle-aged, with wild, tangled hair and a bright red bathrobe that flapped in the breeze. Her face flushed, and she was shaking her fist at the sky like she was cursing the gods themselves.

“Ma’am, please.” a nervous voice called from inside the room—probably a hotel employee trying to calm her down. “You can’t throw things out the window. Someone could’ve been hurt.”

“Someone should be hurt!” she roared back. “That TV was his precious baby, and I hope it’s in as many pieces as my heart!”

I exchanged a wide-eyed glance with the delivery guy, who muttered, “Man, she’s lost it.”

The hotel’s front door burst open, and the manager, a wiry man named Grayson, sprinted out. His tie was askew, and his face was a mix of panic and exasperation.

“Is everyone okay?” he shouted, scanning the crowd. His eyes landed on me, standing closest to the wreckage. “Tom, are you hurt?”

“I’m fine,” I said, though my voice shook. “Just…nearly got flattened by a TV, though.”

Grayson winced, running a hand through his thinning hair. “I am so sorry. This is—unprecedented. Please, come inside, we’ll get this sorted.”

Before I could respond, the woman in 403 leaned out again, now holding what looked like a lamp. “You tell that no-good snake I’m not done yet!” she yelled, waving the lamp menacingly.

“Ma’am, put the lamp down!” Grayson shouted, his voice cracking.

He turned to a bellhop who’d just jogged up. “Call the police, now. And get maintenance to block off this area.”

The bellhop nodded and darted back inside while Grayson muttered, “Why did I take this job?”

I couldn’t help but ask, “Who is that up there?”

Grayson sighed, glancing up at the window. “That’s Mrs. Clara Henshaw. Checked in two days ago with her husband. Apparently, she just found out he’s been… less than faithful. She’s been screaming about it since noon, but I didn’t think she’d—well, do this.”

As if on cue, Clara’s voice rang out again. “Forty years, Harold! Forty years, and you throw it away for some floozy in Fortuna?!”

The lamp sailed out the window, landing in a shrub instead of on anyone’s head. The crowd gasped, and I took a few more steps back, just in case.

“She’s got a hell of an arm,” I said, half-impressed, half-terrified.

Grayson shook his head. “She’s got a hell of a temper. I need to get up there before she tosses the minibar next.”

Just then, Jake’s beat-up truck pulled up to the curb, and he leaned out the window, grinning. “What’s with the junkyard? You tossin’ out TVs now?”

I pointed at the shattered remains. “Not me. Crazy lady in 403. Nearly took my head off.”

Jake whistled, eyeing the wreckage. “Damn, dude. You always find the drama. Hop in before she starts chucking microwaves.”

I grabbed my bag, still glancing up at the window. Clara was now arguing loudly with someone inside, her voice carrying snatches of “divorce papers” and “you’ll regret this.” As I slid into Jake’s car, sirens wailed in the distance, and I saw Grayson sprinting back into the hotel, probably praying for a miracle.

“Think she’ll be okay?” Jake asked as we pulled away.

“Sounds like she’s got enough fire to burn through this,” I said. “Her ex, though? He’s gonna need a new TV.”

I laughed, the adrenaline finally fading, but I couldn’t shake the image of that TV plummeting toward me—or Clara’s furious silhouette against the sky.

The Arcata Hotel wouldn’t forget this day anytime soon, and neither would I.

Up in the silver-choked hills of Virginia City, where the ghosts of rough men still whisper through the saloon doors and ladies in hoop skirts rustle softly through time, a most peculiar tale has settled like dust over C Street. It concerns the Miller family—Gary, Janis, and their daughter Tiffany—and a courthouse that seems more inclined to tarry than to try.

Once more, and not for the first time, the wheels of justice in Storey County have hit a rut, skidding into a ditch marked “Stay of Proceedings.” For those unfamiliar with legal mumbo-jumbo, the court hearing slated for the first of May got shelved again as if it were yesterday’s sourdough bread–not quite stale, but best left to sit.

The Millers, you see, have found themselves tangled in the barbed wire of public accusation following a clash last summer with a fellow named Ricky Johnson, who was out illegally collecting signatures because he had no permit for some civic purpose during Virginia City’s annual Hot August Nights celebration.

Mr. Johnson tells it like this–he claims that Gary Miller hurled the most dreadful slur known to the English tongue and went on to invoke lynching imagery fit to make a buzzard blush. A video of this row–clipped and posted with the slick editing of a modern witch trial—made its rounds on TikTok, which, for those of you uninitiated, is a sort of gallows stage where reputations go to perish in sixty seconds or less.

In the video, Gary Miller gets baited into repeating a statement about a “hanging tree,” which he promptly redirects into the realm of absurdity by claiming the tree was in Johnson’s yard. Janis, like any wife worth her salt, reached out to shoo the man away–no more than a mother might shoo flies off her pie–but that, too, was called “assault.” Their daughter, Tiffany, faces a charge for the grave offense of irritating a peace officer–a task in Storey County that ain’t hard, as anyone who’s tried to park a mule without a permit can attest.

Let us be plain about one thing–the Millers did not issue one racial slur. They did not assault Mr. Johnson. They are not villains, nor were they drunk on malice. They are a Nevada family now caught in the crosshairs of something far more dangerous than bigotry–political ambition.

Storey County District Attorney Anne Langer, it appears, has taken up the cause with a kind of zeal not often seen since the witch-hunting days of Salem, and her banner is flying high beneath that of Attorney General Aaron Ford. Why, one might ask? Some say it’s justice. Others say it’s politics, that the case is less about facts and more about optics–about appeasing the louder voices in Carson City, who’d rather condemn on social media than consider evidence in court.

Even Governor Joe Lombardo chimed in, quick to denounce the Millers before the ink was dry on an affidavit. And the Hot August Nights organizers? They banned the Millers for life, throwing them under the bus with the same speed and grace a poker cheat might get tossed out of the Bucket of Blood Saloon.

Don’t misunderstand–I’ve seen true ugliness in this world, and I’d never pen a word to defend it. But what happened in Virginia City is less like justice and more like theater–a stage play performed for a digital mob, with the truth buried under a million views.

So here we are, with the Millers still waiting, the court continues stalling, and the law turning slow as molasses in a January frost. If there’s one thing Virginia City has always had a nose for–it’s gold dust and scapegoats—and it’s starting to look like the Millers struck both.

One might wonder when the facts will get their day in court and whether truth still matters in a world where perception is currency. Until then, the Millers remain in limbo, convicted not by a jury but by a touchscreen.

It’s been a couple of lively nights here in the proud old belly of Nevada—though “lively” ain’t the sort of word that sits too comfortably next to gunpowder and death. But truth be told, the hills are whisperin’, and the saloons are buzzin’ with word of not one, but two men who met their end not by cholera or old age but by the kind of modern death meted out at the barrel of a pistol.

First up was Carson City’s little ballad of blood and regret. On the night of April 30, the good and god-fearing folk of Telegraph Street got roused by the unholy crack of gunfire just before ten bells.

A feller named De Lecs Smith, age 26—young enough to know better and old enough to do worse—found himself exchanging harsh words with a man born in August ‘78. Whether it was over women, whiskey, or wounded pride–nobody rightly knows, but what’s known is this–the two took their disagreement out into the street, and only one of ‘em walked away.

Smith, not inclined to hang around for the law to offer its opinion, took off—but didn’t get far. Somewhere in an hour, his conscience or cowardice caught up with him, and he dialed up the 9-1-1 Center like a man late to his reckoning. The deputies scooped him up before the night was over, and now he sits in a cell without bail, accused of open murder, battery with a deadly weapon, and carrying a concealed piece without a paper to say he could.

The victim’s name ain’t released—perhaps out of respect, or the family’s still being notified—but his story’s already written in chalk and sorrow on Telegraph Street.

If that wasn’t enough, Reno—proud sister city to Carson and just as capable of nighttime mischief—saw a bloodletting less than 24 hours later. On the First of May, just as the sun was thinking about tucking in behind the Sierras, gunshots rang out in front of the Silver Legacy Resort Hotel and Casino. That’s right–bullets flew where once coins clinked, and a man fell dead right outside the circus-colored doors of Lady Luck’s palace.

Reno police responded with haste, but the shooter–like a ghost was gone before they got there. No name for the victim, no name for the suspect, and no answer to that age-old question–what drives a man to shoot another down in the very heart of town?

The law says there’s no danger to the rest of us, but if you ask me, any time men start solving disputes with sidearms–danger ain’t far off. So hold your kin close, keep your temper checked, and maybe think twice before offering insult over a poker hand or a strong drink.

Now, friends, if you’ve ever eyed a map of Nevada, you’ll notice that Henderson is not within hollerin’ distance of the state capital. No, it’s a long hitch from Carson City, and one might reckon that to make the journey, you’d either need a stout horse, a strong will, or a political reason mighty important. As it turns out, Governor Joe Lombardo had just such a reason when he saddled up and rode down to Pinecrest Academy Sloan Canyon—a charter school nestled deep in the southern desert, far from the legislative lamp-posts of Carson.

The Governor came bearing a bill to overhaul Nevada’s ailing education system—an enterprise that has shown more spirit than structure. The “Nevada Accountability in Education Act,” as it’s so grandly named, is a kind of medicine meant to cure what ails the Silver State’s schools, and, judging from the figures tossed around, the patient is in a bad way.

Mr. Lombardo’s proposal is as wide-ranging as a prairie horizon. It aims to raise student performance, flatten funding inequities, and give troubled schools a proper shaking by the collar.

“We’re going to measure results,” the Governor said, with a tone that suggested the days of blind hope and soft grading were drawing to a close.

His plan includes restructuring school boards, transferring school control to local governments if needed, and doling out surplus state funds like biscuits at a barn-raising—provided folks are willing to work for ’em. Still, it speaks nothing to the act of teaching.

Now, don’t mistake this for empty talk. The Governor means to put coins behind the curtain. With a $2.3 billion commitment to the cause and a $30 million pot for rewarding high-performing teachers and administrators, Lombardo seems set to back up his promises with proper pay. There’s also a plan for “open enrollment,” which, to the uninitiated, means parents can shuffle their children away from schools that teach arithmetic like it’s witchcraft and into ones where a pupil might learn something before graduation.

Dr. Steve Canavero, the interim state superintendent and likely a man with more graphs than gray hairs, explained that our eighth-graders are battling arithmetic like it’s a foreign invader—only 23.7 percent are proficient in math. Reading ain’t much better, and the students who took a beating during the pandemic are still trying to stand upright.

“Systemic issue,” he called it, a polite way of saying the whole shebang’s been sagging for some time.

But the plan doesn’t stop at charts and cash. It also offers something educators might like–legal immunity when they step in to break up student scuffles. Teachers, at long last, may defend one child from another without fearing a suit into early retirement.

Still, the bill hasn’t even cleared the Legislative Council Bureau, and no one knows what the final tab will be. Lombardo acknowledged as much and declared it’s high time we hold the system itself to the lofty standards we keep foisting on our children and teachers.

In sum, the Governor brought his big ideas a long way south to a town that usually sees more sun than statecraft. Whether this bill gallops through the Legislature like a Mustang or gets stuck in the mud like a stagecoach in a spring thaw remains to be seen.

But one thing’s certain—when a Governor rides far from the capital to talk schoolbooks and statistics, he either means business or needs the scenery.