Blog

Nevada’s unemployment rate held steady at 13.4 percent in September as jobless figures fell in other states. The September figure is a drop from a year ago at 14.9 percent.    

State employment department economists say 10,000 jobs were added, but most were seasonal and the net job gain was closer to 1,800.  Governor Brian Sandoval says the stabilizing numbers are a good sign but officials still need to work to spur job growth and re-training.    

The Las Vegas metropolitan area continues to post the highest jobless numbers, with 13.6 percent unemployment last month, compared to 12.6 percent in the Reno-Sparks area and 12.4 percent in Carson City.  Nevada lags behind the national September jobless rate of 9.1 percent.

But the state’s GOP leadership has bigger fish to fry, as the chairman of the Republican National Committee is urging Nevada Republicans to delay their caucuses by three weeks to February 4th. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus says in a letter that changing the date will benefit Nevada in several ways, including giving it a more prominent place on the nomination calendar.      

Several Republican presidential candidates and the state of New Hampshire are furious over Nevada having scheduled its contest for January 14th. They argue that would wedge New Hampshire’s primary too close to Nevada’s voting and Iowa’s caucuses, which are slated for January 3rd.          

My first reaction is wanting to tell New Hampshire, the RNC and any boycotting Presidential candidate to piss off — but I’m think better of this. Instead state GOP leaders ought to move the caucuses so they end after all others. This would place Nevada right on par with being dead-last in the nation with employment as well as its highest-in-the-country foreclosure rate.

Jus’ a suggestion, since arguing over caucuses isn’t bringing jobs to Nevada either.

Mom was baking cookies and had jus’ set the metal baking sheet on the counter to cool before lifting them off. Her last words were, “Be careful, it’s hot.”

Evidently, Deirdre wasn’t listening,  more focused on the cookies than what Mom told her and Marcy. Without hesitation, other than to check to be certain Mom wasn’t looking, Deirdre took a bite.

Mind you, she didn’t lift one of the cooling cookies from the sheet –- no -– she bit the cookie as it lay on the sheet. This was followed by the most painful scream a five-year-old could manage with a mouthful of hot baked goods.

Within seconds the evidence of what had happened was plain to see on Deirdre’s face as both her upper and lower lips were swollen with blisters. Mom took her to the kitchen sink and started applying cool water to her burn,  followed by some ice cubes and later a trip to Seaside Hospital.  

As for me, I recall looking at the sheet, with a perfect bite mark in one of the cookies, then — like a dutiful brother — laughing.

We were visiting some friends at base housing, when Mom forbid me to go explore the caves below the field. Instead of listening to her — I rushed off to the caves that were located below the base’s ball field.

When I finally came back up the hillside, I heard Mom hollering for me. I could see her standing at the edge of the upper level housing looking down at me.

Busted!

As fast as I could I ran towards the road leading up to where she was, hoping to avoid her and whatever punishment she had planned for me. However Mom surprised me and started down the hill towards me.

Before I knew it, she had a switch in hand and a hold of my left shoulder. She proceeded whacking me on the butt and upper legs as we continued up the hill towards the housing units.

Needless to say that switch hurt even though I was wearing jeans. I think the most embarrassing thing about the whipping was the fact that I cried in front of my friends.

Now days a butt-blistering like that can’t be given without someone crying abuse.

This is a follow up on a story written last January called, “Murder in the Moon.”  The death penalty trial for two men accused of beating and strangling their Las Vegas escort service boss, then taking her body into the desert east of Las Vegas and burning it has been delayed.

The murder trial for Keon Park and Min Chang has been reset for August 20, 2012.  They were indicted on charges of conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree kidnapping, first-degree kidnapping with a deadly weapon, murder with a deadly weapon and robbery with a deadly weapon in the death of Yung Park.

I still find it difficult to drive by Keon’s old apartment complex on El Rancho and not think about what he’s done.

One morning I decided I was going to try to do something I had never done before. I was going to make myself a dead-fall trap.

With that in mind I found myself a good length of rope from our shed and I took it up into the woods with me. Next I found a trail to set my trap up on.

I tossed the rope over a high branch of a tree and tied it off to a large log.

It took me a longer than I thought it would to get the log up ended and leaning against the tree. It must have weighed a couple hundred pounds.

After getting the log balanced I set about creating a figure-four trigger. It took me a number of tries to get it to stay in place when the log was moved away from the tree.

Finally, I found the perfect balancing point between the trigger and the log. Satisfied with my work, I stepped back to look at what I had done.

It was like watching a slow-motion movie — as the log topple backward and the loop popped off the ground as the trigger fell apart. I jumped as I high as I could to avoid the loop as it flew underneath me.

I couldn’t jump high enough — fast enough.

The loop grabbed me by the calf of my left leg and I found myself flipped upside down, zooming skyward. I heard the log collapse on the ground and I suddenly stopped moving towards the branch the rope was hanging over.

It would take me about 20 minutes to finally gather the courage to cut the rope and set myself free — after all I was about 35 feet above the ground, hanging upside down. Unfortunately, I didn’t drop in slow-motion.

I’ve always imagined some old buck  — having seen me get caught in my own trap — laughing at my folly.

Kay purchased a new bedside alarm clock shortly after her old one stopped working. It has easy to see numbers with a nice back-light and a gentle-sounding buzz that won’t jar a person from their sleep.

She set the time and the alarm and tested the new clock out the day before she put it to use for the first time. Unfortunately she didn’t hear it go off that morning because she also sleeps with a fan to drown out background noise made by others still up and knocking around after she’s in bed.

When she awoke, she realized she had less than five-minutes to get ready, get out of the house and get on the road before she’d be late for work. Later, when she returned home, she said she made it out of the house in about four-minutes and still managed to make it to work with around ten-minutes to spare.

The she added, “But the strangest thing happened to me on my last break as I was getting out of the restroom.”

I waited.

“I realized something was odd about my pants,” she continued, “They felt funny as I pulled them up and that when I noticed…”

Kay paused, “They were on backwards!”

“What?” I asked, not certain if I had heard her correctly.

“Yeah, they were on backwards most of the day!” she returned.

Then she explained, “I decided to wear my slip-on jeans, you know, the ones that are like a pair of sweat pants?”

“I know what you’re talking about,” I said.

When she first bought them, I had teased her that they looked sort of like the kind of pants a parent would buy for their toddler. They don’t have a real fly or front pockets in them and slide on even over bulky diapers.

Then she chuckled, “The worst part is nobody realized the fake zipper thingy was in the back and I walked around work all day like that.”

It was conversation I wasn’t supposed to hear, but since the window was open I couldn’t help it. I was sitting at my desk, writing.

This involved two pre-teen boys, one about ten the other perhaps 12. They were talking about a nine-year old girl they knew at school.

The pair was walking along the sidewalk curb, their arms out from their sides, balancing themselves. The younger of the two following the older.

“So you dared her to show you and she did?” the ten-year old asked with incredulity.

“Yup,” the 12-year old replied with confidence.

“Then what do you mean they’re boring?” the younger boy asked his buddy as they walked by my house.

The older of the two shrugged, then answered, “If you’ve seen one set of boobs – you’ve seen them all!”

“Oh,” was the understanding reply from the ten-year-old.

We were simply to go to the state building downtown, drop off some water samples and return to the office. But Dave Barber and I didn’t listen to what we were told.

Instead we decided to visit one of our favorite places – a local pawn shop. We had been there before and I had my eye on a set of practice samurai swords.

The swords were made of wood and perfect for practicing martial arts at the base gym across from our barracks. I was doing my best to save up 30-bucks to buy a set.

Once inside I asked to hold the large katana sword. It felt perfectly balanced in my hand and reminded me of the many days I had spent training with one at the air base as well as while attending night school.

“You don’t even know what to do with it,” Dave said, making fun of me as I must have looked like I was drooling over the piece of carved wood.

That’s when I decided to show him — as smoothly and as swiftly as I could I sliced through the air, displaying my skill. Then for the climax I decided to complete the show with what is commonly called a “Thunder cut.”

Crash! Smash! Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle…

Suddenly I found myself standing under a shower of glass and dust. I sliced right through four fluorescent tubes jus’ above my head.

I thought Dave was going to pee himself from laughing at me.

And while the shop’s owner let me off – saying he understood how accidents happen – the next time we came in, I saw a small sign by the display case that read: “No swinging swords while in store.”

She was a prostitute during the late 19th century and very early 20th century who lived in Virginia City and Bodie, California. Legend says she was selflessly nursing sick miners during an epidemic and succumbed to the illness herself.

Because of this, Rosa May has been referred to as the “hooker with a heart of gold.”

Her parents were Irish immigrants. In 1871 she ran away from her home in Pennsylvania  and between 1871 to 1873, began her career of prostitution.

It appears that she started in the trade while living in New York City, and then drifted through Colorado and Idaho. She first appears in Virginia City in 1873, where worked in brothels throughout the Carson City, Reno, and Virginia city areas.

From 1873 to 1888, the majority of her time was spent in Virginia City where she worked for madam, Cad Thompson, a.k.a. Sarah Higgins. Rosa was often was left in charge during Cad’s trips to San Francisco.

Between 1888 through the early 1890s, she traveled to and from Bodie and eventually settled there in 1893. Land records from 1902 show that Rosa purchased a house in Bodie’s “Red Light District,” for $175, back up against the “Celestial section,” of town as the Chinese were known.

Letters, diaries, and other writings suggest she was a charming person, took an interest in others, but was somewhat volatile emotionally. There appears to have been a serious or traumatic event in her early years but no record exists of what it could have been.

While she first appears in the 1900 census records — there are no records of Rosa May living in Bodie after the 1910 census. This lack of a paper trail has left many historians to speculate what became of her.

Bodie was declining rapidly during the period that Rosa May disappears, and it may be that she left the area in search of greener pastures. Her supposed resting place in Bodie is a popular tourist destination for those exploring Bodie State Park.

While there is a headstone with her name on it located outside of Bodies’s cemetery proper, it is believed not to be marking her actual resting place. The only evidence that she is buried in Bodie is a photo illustrating the Rosa May piece from Ella Cain’s 1950’s book, “The Story of Bodie.”

This photo shows a decrepit wooden fence surrounding an otherwise unmarked grave. Since Ella Cain’s biographical sketch of Rosa May is mostly fiction, it is likely the photo was chosen for its picturesque qualities.

In her book, Cain relates the story of the epidemic and Rosa succumbing to the same illness that had stricken the miners for whom she was caring. Other resident’s accounts and external records refute that there was any type of epidemic during the winter of 1911-1912.

Author George Williams III conducted an exhaustive search in the 1970’s for Rosa May’s death records, he found nothing.  His research is well documented in the book, “Rosa May: The Search for A Mining Camp Legend.”