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A First for Gainful Employment

In a turn of events, the University of Nevada, Reno Extension, has appointed Adam Carpenter as the new extension county coordinator for Carson City and Storey County. It may not shake the very foundations of the world, but Carpenter holds a degree in philosophy and has found a job—one that even pays money—worthy of profound contemplation.

Whispered in college hallways for generations is that the fate of a philosophy graduate is to sit beneath a tree and ponder existence while passing students toss spare change out of pity. Yet Carpenter is living proof that such dark prophecies do not always come to pass. In securing employment, he has triumphed over odds even longer than those faced by that fabled soul who majored in Advanced Underwater Basket Weaving.

Carpenter will now take his place among those who dispense wisdom to the masses, working with city and county offices, community members, and his fellow Extension colleagues to ensure that the good people of Carson City and Storey County are well-informed on vital matters such as nutrition, youth development, and environmental conservation. One can only assume that his philosophical training will be put to good use when explaining why a balanced diet is preferable to a steady regimen of fried foods or when resolving the age-old riddle of why children refuse to eat vegetables.

The northern area director for the Extension, Holly Gatzke, expressed great enthusiasm for Carpenter’s appointment, citing his “valuable experience and strong commitment to community engagement.” She did not explicitly mention whether she was impressed by his ability to translate Kant into plain English, but one assumes that played a role in the decision.

Carpenter’s previous endeavors include running after-school programs for elementary students, coordinating science events for teenagers, and working in client relations for a healthcare system. These noble pursuits have prepared him well for proving to the world that a philosopher can perform duties beyond staring pensively into the middle distance.

“I’m grateful for the opportunity to serve Carson City and Storey County and to work alongside Extension’s dedicated team,” Carpenter said, suppressing the urge to add, “Therefore, I am.”

His appointment sets a precedent. If a philosopher can find employment, what other miracles may pass? Will a poet soon be discovered earning a living wage? Could a historian be sighted outside academia, engaged in work that does not involve writing lengthy dissertations no one will ever read? The mind reels at the possibilities.

For now, let us take a moment to reflect on the remarkable fortune of Adam Carpenter, who has secured a job and done so in a manner that allows him to dispense knowledge, aid the community, and—most miraculously of all—put his degree to use.

Let’s turn our attention to where men are known to do some remarkable things—both noble and idiotic. Our subject is in the latter category, and he goes by Brandon Christiansen.

At approximately 5:20 on Saturday evening in Spanish Springs, while most respectable folk were settling in for supper, Mr. Christiansen, aged 43 years and seemingly possessed of a most unfortunate lack of judgment, decided that the best use of his time was to discharge a shotgun at an occupied vehicle. The decision, we must assume, was not made after deep contemplation nor with the benefit of sober reasoning, for officials quickly discovered that he was under the influence of alcohol at the time of the incident.

Now, shooting at an occupied vehicle is, on its own, a poor life choice. Doing so while drunk is an even poorer one. But to do so in the presence of children? Well, that elevates the matter from mere folly to full-blown calamity. It was, of course, no surprise to anyone but perhaps Mr. Christiansen himself that the law soon came knocking.

The Sparks Police Department wasted no time identifying their man and ensuring he found himself in new accommodations at the Washoe County Detention Facility. His itinerary now includes charges of child endangerment, possession of a firearm while intoxicated, and the unlawful discharge of said firearm—charges which, in sum, suggest that the State of Nevada frowns upon drunkenly firing weapons at people.

Miraculously, no injuries came from the action, which one might argue is more due to fortune than wisdom. The Sparks Police, ever diligent, now request that any witnesses—or those with knowledge of the incident—step forward and contact them or Secret Witness.

As for Mr. Christiansen, he will likely have plenty of time to reflect on his decisions, preferably with less liquor and fewer firearms at his disposal. Whether he will emerge from this experience a wiser man remains unknown, but if history teaches us anything, common sense is a rare and precious commodity, and some are determined to prove it.

Michele Fiore is a woman whose penchant for politics and personal finance seems tangled up like a cat in a knitting basket. Once a Justice of the Peace in the fine town of Pahrump, Fiore faces the justice she once dispensed, and she is none too pleased about it.

It all started with a noble cause—a memorial for fallen police officers. A fundraiser, donations, and seventy thousand dollars materialized like a puff of magic smoke.

But instead of erecting a grand tribute to the boys in blue, that money allegedly went into a different kind of ceremony—her daughter’s wedding. Now, weddings are fine affairs, full of joy, tears, and bills long enough to make a banker faint, but they do not, by most legal definitions, constitute a police memorial.

A jury found Fiore guilty of wire fraud, a fancy way of saying she took money under one pretense and spent it under another. As a result, she was booted from her position in October without a gavel, a paycheck, or a friend on the bench.

But Fiore is not one to go quietly. No, sir. She has filed for a new trial, citing a grand collection of grievances—everything from biased witnesses to an attorney who, if her filing is correct, defended her about as well as an umbrella defends against a hurricane.

Her legal woes, however, are not without a political backdrop. Fiore, a longtime firebrand and unapologetic supporter of Donald Trump, has been a target of political slings and arrows since before 2020. Whether one sees her as a martyr of partisan persecution or merely reaping the rewards of a poorly managed charity drive depends on where one sits on the political spectrum.

Among the star witnesses in this courtroom drama was Fiore’s daughter, Sheena Siegel, who found herself in a bit of a predicament when confronted with checks that bore either her signature or her mother’s—she wasn’t quite sure which. When prosecutors pressed her on whether she was, at that very moment, confessing to a federal crime, a quick trip to the legal department was in order. The next day, she promptly invoked the Fifth Amendment.

Nicole Beck, another witness, took the stand and reportedly delivered testimony so emotional it could have sold tickets. The defense took issue, arguing people were available to explain the statute in question without evoking tears that could sway a jury. Then, there was Governor Joe Lombardo, whose name alone added a touch of drama to the proceedings.

Fiore’s defense, however, was not what one might call airtight. According to her filing, her attorney fumbled pretrial motions, allowed evidence to be admitted that should have been excluded, and generally provided a level of legal representation best described as “lacking.” Whether this will be enough to secure her a new trial remains to be seen, but prosecutors had until February 14 to respond.

And then, come March 10, Fiore will find out just how much all this legal wrangling has bought her—freedom or further trouble. Either way, it’ll be another chapter in the long and winding saga of a woman who has never been one to shrink from a fight, no matter the odds or the evidence.

Blue Star Mothers of Spanish Springs NV5

Lisa Callen sits at her kitchen table in Spanish Springs, Nevada, writing names on a list. The names are of sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, who are far away. She knows each name well. They are the faces of the men and women who wear the uniform of the country but carry the weight of their loved one’s hearts across the world.

The Blue Star Mothers of Spanish Springs NV5, the group she leads, works quietly. Their mission is simple, but the work is never easy. They gather to create care packages, lovingly packing boxes with snacks, essential hygiene items, and thoughtful little comforts.

Each box becomes a treasure trove of warmth and generosity, designed to uplift and support those in need–things to remind those far from home that someone remembers. But there is always more to do. The need has grown, and now, they are preparing more than 200 packages to send to Nevada’s deployed servicemen and women.

Each box carries a piece of home, a gesture to let them know that someone remembers. Callen knows the value of those small comforts. For a soldier, a snack or a simple treat means the difference between the cold distance of war and a brief moment of warmth, a moment of connection.

The task before her and the others is daunting. The estimated cost for shipping alone—somewhere between $3,500 and $4,500—is high. And there’s the challenge of gathering the supplies to fill each box. They have a plan. The community will help. The people of Spanish Springs will lend a hand. A list of needed items is available on Amazon, and the community can send whatever they can spare. A donation drive where people can drop off supplies is happening March 8 at the Nevada Veterans Memorial Plaza.

Lisa Callen watches the sun sink lower, casting long shadows over the dry earth. She thinks about the soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen, the names on the list, and the moment a package is opened. Lisa Callen thinks about their faces when they see that someone remembers. And she knows they will all be a little less lonely, if only for a moment.

With the stakes high and the lights bright, the Fernley Vaqueros proved they could deliver. On Friday, they stepped onto the court with a score to settle and left with a decisive 61-50 victory over the North Valleys Panthers. Call it payback, call it justice—call it whatever you like—but Fernley showed they weren’t walking away with another close loss like they did back in January.

For North Valleys, it wasn’t for lack of trying. Ivy Williams played her heart out, nearly securing a double-double with 22 points and nine rebounds. Her hands were as quick as ever, notching multiple steals for the 21st game in a row. Annika Hester chipped in 14 points and seven boards, but even with their efforts, the Panthers couldn’t claw their way to victory.

Fernley, meanwhile, has been hitting its stride at the right time, winning five of its last six games and bringing their record to 21-6. Unfortunately, their momentum ran into a wall named Churchill County the next day, where they suffered a bruising 63-31 defeat.

As for North Valleys, their season is over. Fernley fought hard for their redemption, but in the unforgiving world of playoffs–one victory does not make a champion.

A Study Telling Us What We Already Knew

The financial wizards at SmartAsset—a name that sounds suspiciously like a choice insult—have put their considerable brainpower to work and discovered, to everyone’s great astonishment, that people in America owe money. Their latest report, Debt Disparities in the U.S.: Regional and Generational Trends, unveils such groundbreaking revelations as “homeownership is expensive” and “student loans exist.”

According to this study, Nevada is among the top ten states where households are so deep in debt they’ve tunneled straight past broke and into negative net worth. Also on this prestigious list of financial despair are Wyoming, West Virginia, Alabama, Oklahoma, Georgia, New York, Virginia, Michigan, and Tennessee. In other words, if you’ve ever thought, Gee, I’d like to live somewhere that guarantees an empty wallet, these states are prime real estate.

The Western U.S. allegedly leads the way in total debt, with the average household owing $104,200. According to SmartAsset, it is driven primarily by home debt, which averages a staggering $263,723. Whether that debt is due to overpriced real estate, a national addiction to quartz countertops, or simply folks borrowing against their homes to buy jet skis, remains unspecified.

The study also informs us that Generation X carries the most overall debt at an average of nearly $107,000, while Millennials are drowning in student loans, averaging $27,648. Wyoming, meanwhile, wins the grand prize for the highest percentage of households with zero or negative net worth at a cheerful 20 percent.

One can only assume that with all that wide-open land, they’re running out of places to bury their unpaid bills.

And for those feeling smug in states not mentioned, don’t get too comfortable—SmartAsset reports that, nationally, 11.1 percent of U.S. households have a net worth of zilch or less. In other words, more than one in ten Americans is financially upside-down, but thanks to this well-funded research, we now have official confirmation of what everyone’s bank account has been screaming for years.

With all its gears well-greased by the tears of indignant bureaucrats, the great machinery of the press has once again set to wailing over a most predictable affair. Thousands of recently hired government workers found themselves unburdened of federal employment on Thursday, their probationary tenure cut short by the merciless shears of Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

It is no surprise to any who possess ears to hear and eyes to read, for the President said what he would do before he ever stepped back in the White House, and the people—by some accident of democracy—agreed with him.

And yet, here we are, treated to the theater of sorrow, with the legacy media feigning shock and despair as if this were some great calamity unforeseen. Handkerchiefs are in high demand, and the ink-stained scribes have ruined many in their convulsions of grief.

But the facts remain unmoved by their lamentations. The positions lost were not long-tenured seats of wisdom but probationary, still in their infancy, and their departure from the public payroll is less a tragedy than a return to that oft-forgotten principle—fiscal prudence.

The dismissed employees hailed from various corners of the bureaucratic empire, including the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the U.S. Forest Service. These agencies, ever-expanding like a balloon in the hands of an excitable child, have now been forced to expel a bit of hot air.

The state of Nevada, where the federal government owns more land than any sensible man would deem necessary, finds itself particularly touched by these reductions. The U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, those grand stewards of endless acreage, must now learn to do with fewer hands.

In response to the uproar, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, overseer of the Forest Service, issued a bold statement with tones as measured as they were unmoved. Secretary Brooke Rollins, a woman immune to the collective sobbing, reaffirmed the administration’s commitment to trimming the fat government, pledging that every dollar would serve the people rather than the bureaucracy.

“Talented individuals,” she assured, “will find many opportunities to contribute to society outside of government.”

A daring claim that could spark a fire in those released, urging them to soar to new heights—or–at the very least, to their local employment office!

The Bureau of Land Management, under the Department of the Interior, elected to say nothing at all—perhaps because silence, unlike verbosity, is not liable to be held against them in the court of public opinion.

For those who relish statistics, the Washington Post has helpfully cataloged the great calamity in numbers, tallying just how many of Nevada’s towns and cities have been affected by the cuts. With 3.1 percent of the workforce attached to the federal teat, Fallon leads the pack in government dependency, while Fernley, at a paltry 0.1 percent, can hardly be troubled to notice.

These figures will no doubt become weapons in the ongoing battle between those who believe the government is the lifeblood of a nation and those who know it as a particularly persistent parasite. In the end, however, the press knew this was coming, the people knew this was coming, and even the dismissed, had they been paying attention, would have known this was coming.

And yet, here we are, drowning in a sea of ink and tears, pretending that the inevitable has somehow taken us by surprise.

Much Ado About Three Chargers

Gather for a tale of woe and despair, a lamentation fit for the annals of history—or at least the more comical sections of it. The great state of Nevada, promised a kingly sum of $38 million to dot its highways with electric vehicle chargers, now finds itself bereft of these promised wonders.

The culprit? The Trump administration. They had the audacity—the unmitigated gall—to halt a program that had thus far produced three chargers in the Silver State. Yes, dear reader, the loss is a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.

Still ungraced with a fourth charger, Nevada highways must now languish in their current state, which, by all appearances, is not different from before the program began. And while 37 other states somehow found a way to allocate their funds, Nevada, beset by “unique challenges”–the uniqueness of which seems to have eluded much of the rest of the country–has found itself clutching a fistful of nothing.

The Nevada Department of Transportation, once poised to release its grand plan for charger deployment any day, was left gobsmacked when the federal spigot got turned off. One cannot help but wonder at the cruel irony: following years of meticulous planning, balancing “speed” with the grave responsibility of ensuring chargers would be “eligible for reimbursement,” the entire enterprise has been laid low before it could reach the dizzying heights of four completed stations.

Meanwhile, certain members of the Senate have risen in righteous indignation, penning letters to the Department of Transportation, decrying this egregious affront to progress. They cry foul, questioning the constitutionality of withholding funds Congress has already approved.

And perhaps they have a point—after all, there’s nothing more American than throwing vast sums of money at a problem and expecting results at some point in the indeterminate future.

But let us take a moment of silence for those three lonely chargers, Nevada’s foray into the electric age. They are relics of what might have been—a grand empire made of infrastructure, cut down before its prime.

Future generations will look back on this and mourn, contemplating what could have been should a few more millions and extra years come with the project. And so, Nevada finds itself back at square one, which, conveniently, is where it started.

The American Red Cross

Once, the American Red Cross was a name that inspired confidence, a mighty force of good that swept into disaster zones with blankets, food, and the promise that someone still cared. But like many fine things of yesteryear—honest politicians, reliable automobiles, and one-cent candies—the Red Cross of today bears little resemblance to its former self.

The northern Nevada chapter has announced yet another change of the guard, with Bridget Posson stepping in as executive director to replace Tiandra Rushing, who has not yet found another job–but would rather be unemployed than continue in her role. That alone should tell you something.

The transition comes hot on the heels of troubling questions about how much assistance—if any—the Red Cross provided to victims of the Davis Fire in Washoe Valley last September.

Folks seeking shelter and support from the esteemed organization found the assistance disappointing.

According to fire victim Hannah Hoobyar, those in need were handed snack-sized bags of chips and left to figure out the rest. It’s a hearty meal, indeed—if you’re a bird.

When pressed for details about how donations for the Davis Fire got spent, the Red Cross declined on-camera interviews, declined to provide documentation, and declined, it seems, to offer much of anything at all. Spokesperson Keith Paul explained at the time that assistance funds were not necessarily used for the Davis Fire directly because there was no specific fundraising designation for the blaze.

So, no one knows where the money went.

Rushing herself admitted frustration with how the Red Cross operates, saying the focus on local disasters wasn’t what it was supposed to be.

“I believe in the mission,” she said, “but the delivery not so much.”

It’s a polite way of saying while the Red Cross still knows how to ask for money, its ability to turn those funds into meaningful help has grown a bit rusty.

Posson has expressed enthusiasm for her new role, declaring she’s focused on helping those in need. If she can manage to do that, it would be a refreshing change of pace.

The Red Cross was once a name that meant something—perhaps under new leadership, it may still find its way back to the days when disaster relief meant more than a handful of potato chips and an empty promise.

If winning in the regular season were all that mattered, the Mineral County Serpents might have had a different tale to tell on Friday. But as it turns out, the Virginia City Muckers weren’t interested in old records or past glories. They came to play basketbal

l, and play they did, steamrolling the Serpents 76-54 in a contest that was less of a battle and more of a well-executed ambush.

Mineral County found itself on the wrong end of the scoreboard for the fifth straight meeting against Virginia City. Whatever luck the Serpents had been counting on ran out long before the final whistle, leaving them with a losing record of 14-15 and no more games on the horizon. If they plan on avenging this loss–they’ll have to wait until next season.

Virginia City, on the other hand, is just getting warmed up. Riding high on a six-game winning streak and boasting a sterling 22-2 record, the Muckers aren’t in the business of slowing down.

They’ll be back on the court by 1:00 p.m. Saturday, taking on Smith Valley in what promises to be another high-scoring affair. The Muckers have put up 55 points or more in their last six games, so Smith Valley had best bring its best—or be prepared to get buried like the Serpents before them.