The Old Blog in the Desert

Lombardo Wants Firefighters for Lithium Infernos

If there’s one thing folks can count on in Nevada besides a casino taking their last dollar, it’s a fire hotter than the hinges of Hades whenever something with lithium catches aflame. A man with a firm handshake and an even firmer grasp on the obvious, Governor Joe Lombardo, has made a startling realization—perhaps firefighters include a team meant to handle such fires.

The good governor made this revelation at the February gathering of Nevada’s Department of Transportation board, where he imparted this wisdom: “If you were talking about the lithium fires, I think it would be conducive to have fire there.”

A sentiment as profound as it is self-evident, proving once again that government meetings are where common sense goes to take a long nap. The newfound enlightenment stems from last summer’s debacle when a truck carrying lithium flipped on I-15 near Baker, Calif., creating a conflagration so spectacular that it left traffic paralyzed for nearly two days.

The event came with a rather inconvenient truth—many emergency responders are about as prepared to handle lithium fires as a gambler is to walk away from the roulette table after one win. To remedy this, NDOT has rustled up some $20,000 in federal funds to host a peer exchange in Las Vegas in April, assembling emergency responders from Utah, California, Arizona, and Nevada. The grand confab, charmingly dubbed the I-15/I-11 Emergency Operations Peer Exchange, will presumably feature discussions on how best to wrangle these fires before they turn every freeway incident into an impromptu fireworks display.

Ever vigilant, Lombardo has also directed emergency management teams to “do some comprehensive training and/or awareness on how we respond to lithium fires.” This initiative comes in the wake of a Homeland Security Commission meeting, where Clark County’s freshly minted fire chief, Billy Samuels, provided an update on their readiness—or lack thereof—to handle such situations.

In an ironic twist, the meeting also included talk of a New Year’s Day Cybertruck explosion outside the Las Vegas Trump International Hotel, set off by a former Green Beret from Colorado. Though not a lithium fire, the incident prompted the governor to remark that fire crews were still “feeling their way on how the hell we deal with these lithium fires,” which is not exactly the kind of confidence-building statement one hopes to hear from the people tasked with preventing mass immolation.

Samuels, newly seated in his role after his predecessor traded firefighting for lawmaking, has yet to respond to inquiries. Whether this silence signals deep contemplation or bureaucratic inertia remains to be seen.

With lithium-powered vehicles and devices multiplying like rabbits in a carrot patch, the state had best sort out how to keep these fires in check. Otherwise, every highway crash may resemble an Old West gunpowder mishap, leaving drivers stranded, firefighters scratching their heads, and state officials scrambling to throw more money at the problem.

A Fight for Justice in Care Homes

Now, friends, we all know the world is brimming with fine speeches and noble intentions, but when it comes to our most vulnerable—our elders and those in need of care—it seems some folks operate with all the compassion of a hungry coyote.

Many well-meaning family have entrusted their loved ones to care facilities, expecting dignified treatment. Instead, they find themselves up against a system that regards human decency as an optional extra. Abuse, neglect, and outright cruelty have been the order of the day, hidden behind closed doors and sterile hallways.

Now, a picture, they say, is worth a thousand words, but when it reveals sores, open wounds, and people abandoned in their filth, it is worth much more—it is worth justice. Enter Henry’s Law, born of tragedy and hard fought by one determined sister who refused to let her brother’s suffering go unforgotten.

Theresa Bigay sounded the alarm in 2020 when her brother, Henry Owens, was left to waste away in Life Care Nursing Home. The name, it’s reckoned, was more of a jest than a promise.

Photos and videos showed neglect so vile it would make a man’s stomach turn. Sores left to fester, days spent in his waste, and a toe lost to sheer disregard—this was the fate of Henry Owens before he passed in 2021 at the age of 61.

But Theresa, God bless her, would not let his suffering be for nothing. She fought, hollered, and made enough ruckus to get Henry’s Law passed in 2023. Now, families could install cameras in care facilities, an extra set of eyes where before there were only blind corners and shrugged shoulders.

But laws, my friends, are much like fences—only as strong as the men and women willing to mend them. Henry’s Law, for all its promise, had no teeth. And what good is a watchdog if it’s got no bite?

Assemblyman Max Carter of Clark County is leading the charge, promising amendments to ensure that when cameras reveal wrongdoing, action is swift, and the public knows which facilities to avoid. Assembly Bill 368 would extend camera access beyond nursing homes to any assisted living or care facility. More importantly, it would slap consequences on those who flouted the rules—revoked licenses, civil penalties, and even criminal charges.

One heart-wrenching testimony came from Peggy Stephenson, whose 92-year-old mother endured rough handling, cold showers, and abandonment in a care facility while suffering dementia. Thanks to cameras, Peggy could see the bruises on her mother’s arms, the forceful dragging, and the indignities forced upon her.

And when she dared to raise her voice? The facility retaliated, banning cameras altogether and hiking fees, as if punishment were their right and justice their enemy.

Her husband, Michael—a retired military colonel—spoke plain truth: “Caregivers are often untrained, underpaid, and suddenly in charge of whether a person eats, bathes, or suffers.” A reality, yet one many lawmakers have been all too willing to ignore.

Then there was Andre Collins, a 29-year-old man with cerebral palsy, who, in his own words, expressed how much he loved living independently. Upon requesting cameras for protection, he learned he could not have them because his caregivers had a right to privacy.

The logic, dear reader, was as twisted as a crooked poker hand. In a world where you can watch your dog frolic in a daycare livestream or check in on your children at school, why should our most vulnerable be left in the shadows?

Nevada’s Next Great Boom and Bust

If the ghosts of Nevada’s silver miners were still rattling around the canyons, they’d be scratching their spectral heads, wondering what all the fuss is about a metal you can’t even use for a belt buckle. Yet here we are, in the throes of another grand mineral scramble, this time for lithium, the lightest metal on Earth, the very lifeblood of our electric future.

Nature, in her infinite wisdom, spent millions of years tucking away a fortune in lithium beneath Nevada’s arid basins, waiting for the day when the world would suddenly realize that what was once about as useful as a paper umbrella in a thunderstorm is now worth its weight in, well, lithium. When the electric carriage came into fashion and the lords of commerce demanded batteries by the ton, Nevada found itself richer than a cardsharp in a saloon full of greenhorns.

“Lithium got hot in the late teens, early 2020s, and people started looking for it more. When you look for something harder, you generally find more of it,” observed Sean McKenna, a man who has spent enough time studying hydrology to know what lurks beneath the desert floor.

And sure enough, with some scratching and digging, lithium deposits turned up in every dried-up lakebed and forgotten valley from Esmeralda County to the Oregon border.

In those fevered years, lithium’s price soared like a politician’s promises before an election. In 2023, it hit an all-time high of $80,000 per ton—a number so staggering it might have convinced an old prospector to trade in his mule for a geologist’s degree.

Electric vehicles were rolling off assembly lines, and the world’s thirst for battery storage seemed unquenchable. But if history has taught Nevada anything, the higher a boom goes, the more spectacular the bust.

By early 2024, the lithium market had plummeted faster than a one-legged gambler at a rigged poker table. Prices dropped 86 percent, forcing mine closures worldwide and leaving many an investor clutching his head in despair.

But like the grizzled old prospectors of yesteryear, the lithium barons of today remain undeterred. Albemarle keeps digging at Silver Peak, the nation’s only operational lithium mine, with plans to expand even if the market doesn’t.

Meanwhile, up at Thacker Pass—home to the largest known lithium deposit in the world—earthmovers are busy because when you sit on a mountain of wealth, you don’t get up just because the price tag wobbles.

And then there’s Rhyolite Ridge, where Australian company Ioneer has figured out a way to hedge its bets with boron, that other great unsung hero of the periodic table. When lithium prices tumble, they’ll peddle boron for glass, detergents, and whatever else the world suddenly remembers it needs.

It is, as always, a game of speculation, high hopes, and crushed dreams. The Trump administration wants to bolster domestic mineral production, which means Nevada’s lithium fortunes may come through policy rather than the whims of the market. The men and women chasing lithium today are no different than the ones who came before, pickaxe in hand, sure they were digging their way to paradise.

Time will tell whether Nevada’s lithium rush will prove a mother lode or another fool’s errand. But for now, the miners keep digging, the speculators keep betting, and the desert, indifferent as ever, watches and waits.

It appears that another one of the infernal metal slabs has planted itself right in the middle of Nevada, like a misplaced tombstone for common sense. The latest offender, a 12-foot contraption, sprang up overnight at Seven Magic Mountains, confounding respectable folk and alarming the Nevada Museum of Art, who had no more say than a preacher at a poker game.

The museum, understandably perturbed, has declared they neither commissioned nor condone this unsolicited yard ornament and are presently engaged in the time-honored civic tradition of figuring out how to get rid of it. Who put it there? No one knows. Who will take it down? That much is certain—whoever has the misfortune of being put on that particular errand.

Like so many of its kin, the monolith is not merely a mute hunk of metal standing idly by, contemplating the desert. This one has taken it upon itself to bear a QR code—a cryptic stamp of the digital age—rumored to lead the unwary straight into the treacherous, snake-infested gulch of cryptocurrency.

What Arthur C. Clarke, he of celestial musings, would have said about this is unknown, but one might suspect he’d have lamented the fall from cosmic grandeur to commercial hucksterism. Monoliths once heralded the dawn of intelligence, but now they hawk dubious investments.

It is not the first time such an object has seen fit to loiter in the Las Vegas Valley. Another appeared last June near Gass Peak, doubtless confusing the local coyotes and frustrating the Bureau of Land Management. Whether these structures are the work of alien intelligence, rogue artists, or a marketing department with more enthusiasm than ethics, the result remains the same—an ever-growing pile of paperwork and exasperated sighs from those charged with their removal.

And so, the desert plays host once more to the strange and the inexplicable, as it has for ages. But whether installed by cosmic forces or some rascal with a welding torch, the monolith, like all things in Nevada, is bound to meet the same fate–dismantled, hauled away, and promptly forgotten until the next one appears.

Ford and Lombardo Square Off

If there’s one thing about Nevada politics, a quiet day is as likely as snow in the desert—possible, but only under the most peculiar circumstances. And last month, when Attorney General Aaron Ford released his 72-page tome of “model immigration policies,” it set off a political scuffle that will likely define the 2026 gubernatorial race.

The combatants? Ford, a Democrat, and Republican Governor Joe Lombardo. The whole business over immigration policies is a classic case of two men looking at the same instruction booklet and reaching entirely different conclusions.

Ford insists that his guidelines were to help local governments and law enforcement agencies about how to handle the ever-bewildering labyrinth of federal immigration laws. According to his office, the idea is to keep state and local agencies from getting tangled in federal enforcement efforts they are not required to participate in—thus sparing the state’s coffers and bolstering trust between immigrant communities and the police.

Reading the document, Lombardo immediately proclaimed it as instructions to create a “sanctuary state.” What constitutes a sanctuary state is a topic of political poetry; in this case, it was to imply that Ford’s policies invited foreign individuals to enter freely.

Ford, naturally, denies this, declaring that he supports no sanctuary for “any criminal—period.” But the matter remained a source of outrage for political operatives on both sides, who need sustenance to keep themselves riled.

If one thought that a raging political fight over immigration would be enough to keep Nevada’s governing class busy, one would be mistaken. Like a chef who discovered a cabinet full of spices, Ford added another ingredient to the political stew by calling out Lombardo for supporting President Donald Trump’s executive order to eliminate the Department of Education.

Yes, dear reader, the institution overseeing the mechanization of America’s school districts now finds itself on the chopping block, and Ford has wasted no time predicting doom.

“The fact is, Joe Lombardo just sold out Nevada’s kids and their futures,” Ford thundered, likely pounding his fist on a lectern for added effect.

Others followed suit, with members of Nevada’s education establishment warning that the loss of federal funding would be catastrophic. Over the last five years, they argued, nearly six billion dollars have flowed into the state’s schools from Washington, and the idea that Nevada could replace those funds with its meager coffers was as laughable as a one-legged man entering a footrace.

Lombardo, however, remains unfazed. He insists that education is best left to the states, that eliminating the federal department will lead to a “localized, innovative, and accountable” approach, and that Nevada’s bottom-rung ranking in education suggests the status quo isn’t worth defending.

Meanwhile, Ford is already licking his chops at the prospect of yet another lawsuit. “I know that Trump said Pell Grants won’t be affected, well I don’t believe him,” Ford said, a sentiment roughly translating to, “I’ll see you in court.”

And with that, Nevada’s two political heavyweights have set the stage for a 2026 contest that will feature immigration, education, and the broader question of whether the federal government should be meddling in the affairs of the Silver State. The ink will flow freely, the coffee will percolate, and by the time this is all said and done, Ford and Lombardo will have filled enough press releases to paper the Great Basin.

Whether Nevada’s students, immigrants, or taxpayers benefit from the fracas remains to be seen, but at least the political class will have something to keep them occupied.

The good folks at the Nevada Department of Employment, Training, and Rehabilitation–who, one presumes, never miss a meal–have released their January 2025 economic report, with all the excitement of a man announcing that he has misplaced his spectacles—again. The state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate remains as stubborn as a mule at 5.8 percent, exactly where it was in December–as if daring the economy to do something about it.

Breaking it down into the three great hubs of civilization in the Silver State, Las Vegas sits at 6.1 percent, Reno holds its head marginally higher at 5.1 percent, and Carson City rests at a dignified five percent as if such figures bring any comfort to a man without two nickels to rub together.

For those preferring a more rustic setting to ponder their empty pocketbooks, unemployment wobbles wildly across the counties. Humboldt County, where folks must have found something useful to do, boasts the lowest unemployment rate at 4.4 percent. Meanwhile, Mineral County, any overachiever in all the wrong ways, soars to a staggering 11.4 percent.

A more distressing bit of arithmetic reveals that unemployment has risen in all of Nevada’s counties, as unwelcome as a skunk at a garden party. Reno-Sparks, perhaps feeling left out, nudged up 0.4 percentage points, while Carson City, ever the competitor, ticked up 0.3. The Las Vegas area, already feeling peckish from its 5.9 percent in December, decided another 0.2 percentage points wouldn’t hurt.

The real champions of this dismal race are Esmeralda, Mineral, and Eureka counties, which saw their jobless numbers climb as though scaling the mountains that surround them, rising 3.5, 1.2, and 1.0 percentage points, respectively. Meanwhile, Churchill, Elko, Clark, and Nye counties took a more reserved approach, with a modest increase of 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points—small but still enough to ensure their citizens remain suitably aggravated.

In summary, Nevada’s economy appears to be following the sage wisdom of an old dog that has settled on a dusty porch–it isn’t improving, but it isn’t getting much worse. And if history has taught us anything, such a situation can persist indefinitely, provided enough official reports are issued to confirm it.

And the Eternal Rate Hike

The Nevada Legislature, in its boundless wisdom, has taken up the noble cause of rescuing the common folk from the clutches of high energy bills—or so they say.

Assemblymember Howard Watts, with a heart brimming with benevolence and a keen eye for rooftop real estate, has unveiled AB458, a bill designed to allow renters the privilege of solar power, a heretofore reserved for the landed gentry. “I’ve toiled with housing advocates, clean energy prophets, and community sages to craft a policy that not only makes fiscal sense but also delivers salvation in the form of savings,” proclaimed Watts, no doubt with the gravity of a man carving his name into the annals of history.

The bill, in short, seeks to remove the pesky legal obstacles that have kept Nevada’s renters from enjoying the golden rays of government-approved sunshine.

Meanwhile, Assemblymember Tracy Brown-May has thrown down the gauntlet against NV Energy with AB452, a bill that would prevent the utility from gleefully foisting the full cost of fuel price increases onto the weary shoulders of its customers. “Even as families shivered in the dark, their bills kept climbing,” lamented Brown-May, who seems to suspect some measure of corporate greed afoot—an allegation that, if true, would surely shock the nation.

Of course, NV Energy is not one to sit idly by while the legislature gallops forth with its grand ideas. The utility, ever the visionary, has already charted its path to 2028 with renewable energy, battery storage, and a smidgen of natural gas to keep the lights on when the sun decides to clock out early. Representatives insist that while batteries are improving, they are not yet ready to shoulder the burden alone, so some good old-fashioned fossil fuel reliability is still required—an assertion that has not impressed the more fervent disciples of clean energy.

Local activist Jackie Spicer, with the Nevada Environmental Justice Coalition, suggests that NV Energy is simply taking “the easy route” by continuing to use natural gas. NV Energy spokesperson Meghin Delaney, ever the realist, counters that “batteries are getting better at long-term storage, but they’re not fully there yet.”

And so, the great tug-of-war continues. But let us not be distracted by the particulars of energy production, for the real news is this–the cost of it all is about to go up, as it always does.

NV Energy has a grand scheme to improve infrastructure and to pay for these improvements, a mere nine percent rate hike looms on the horizon—though, in an act of extraordinary generosity, they assure us that if we use precisely the same amount of energy next year as we did this year, we might, by some mysterious arithmetic, end up paying less. Nevadans, meanwhile, are growing increasingly weary of the ever-rising price of simply existing.

And so, as NV Energy busies itself, drafting its next grand plan for 2029 and beyond, the rest of us wait, wallets in hand, to see just how much lighter they will become in the name of progress.

Yesterday morning, the good folks of Yerington found themselves in a most inconvenient predicament, all because of an anonymous scoundrel with a telephonic contraption and a shortage of both scruples and good sense. At precisely 8:10 a.m., the Yerington Police Department, accompanied by the ever-dutiful Lyon County Sheriff’s deputies, descended upon Raley’s grocery store in response to a most unwelcome report of a bomb threat.

Now, the offending party—who remains as unidentified as a stray hat in a windstorm—had taken it upon himself to ring up the establishment and demand money, promising in return a most disagreeable experience in the form of a sudden and violent rearrangement of the store’s general structure. The store’s staff, not being of the mind to negotiate under such conditions, promptly summoned the authorities.

As it turns out, this particular brand of extortion was not a limited-time offer, as similar threats had been called into Raley’s stores over in California, suggesting that the culprit was either very ambitious or unoriginal. Regardless, customers and staff were ushered out of the store as the Consolidated Bomb Squad and Tahoe-Douglas Bomb Squad conducted a thorough search, no doubt overturning loaves of bread and peering suspiciously into barrels of pickles.

After much diligent sweeping, dusting, and peeking into corners, it was concluded that there was no bomb, no villain lurking in the soup aisle, and no cause for further alarm. The store resumed its regular operations, and the townspeople were free to return to the noble pursuit of selecting produce and debating the ripeness of melons.

As for the culprit, one can only hope that fate has an appropriate reckoning in store, perhaps involving a long and lonesome stretch spent contemplating the ill-advised nature of his choices.

I count the heads I talk to weekly like a prisoner marks days on a wall. Since I got the boot from the paper in Virginia City, that number has dropped from dozens.

This week–it’s been two—my daughter-in-law and the woman at the bank. It would’ve been three, but my wife went to Southern California for a vacation, so she doesn’t count.

I started keeping track after they cut me loose, but if I’m being honest, this has been the pattern all along. It began to sink in during Covid, that asshole quarantine life, and then later, even when I had the paper job.

Working from home, I cranked out stories nobody gave a shit about, then every Friday, I’d go out and deliver the same goddamn newspapers I wrote for. Real poetic.

At least then, I had the route—talked to the old timers who still give two shits about a printed page. Then I’d hit the saloons on C Street, throwing back drinks with strangers, laughing too loud, pretending I belonged somewhere.

But now? That’s over.

Too far, too expensive, and money’s a bitch again, so no more playing cowboy at the bar, no more chasing ghosts in a town built on them. And without that, I start looking back too much.

Fucking dangerous thing, looking back.

Turns out, I’ve been alone my whole fucking life. Swing shifts, graveyard shifts—me walking in when my wife walks out.

As a child, I wandered the redwoods and splashed in High Prairie Creek by myself, making up stories since there was no one else to talk to. So now I ask myself—was it always supposed to be this way?

Is this normal? Is this natural?

Or did I just get good at being my own fucking shadow?

I count the bastards and bitches I talk to weekly like a prisoner marks days on a wall. Since I got the boot from the paper in Virginia City, that number has dropped from dozens.

This week–it’s been two—my daughter-in-law and the woman at the bank. It would’ve been three, but my wife went to Southern California for a vacation, so she doesn’t count.

I started keeping track after they cut me loose, but if I’m being honest, this has been the pattern all along. It began to sink in during Covid, that asshole quarantine life, and then later, even when I had the paper job.

Working from home, I cranked out stories nobody gave a shit about, then every Friday, I’d go out and deliver the same goddamn newspapers I wrote for. Real poetic.

At least then, I had the route—talked to the old timers who still give two shits about a printed page. Then I’d hit the saloons on C Street, throwing back drinks with strangers, laughing too loud, pretending I belonged somewhere.

But now? That’s over.

Too far, too expensive, and money’s a bitch again, so no more playing cowboy at the bar, no more chasing ghosts in a town built on them. And without that, I start looking back too much.

Fucking dangerous thing, looking back.

Turns out, I’ve been alone my whole fucking life. Swing shifts, graveyard shifts—me walking in when my wife walks out.

As a child, I wandered the redwoods and splashed in High Prairie Creek by myself, making up stories since there was no one else to talk to. So now I ask myself—was it always supposed to be this way?

Is this normal? Is this natural?

Or did I just get good at being my own fucking shadow?