A Father-Son Moment on the Truckee River

As dwindling flow levels on the Truckee force some people to cast their fishing luck farther west, nine-year-old Axel is content to stay along the cool shaded shores of Riverside Drive.

“Look at that crawdad,” he says, holding up a 3-4 inch long greenish- brown crayfish, its pincers waving. “And here’s a bigger one.”

Axel scoops up another one, then places it gently down into the bucket full of river water.

“I gotta go get some more minnows for them,” he says scrambling back down into the clear river water that runs from Lake Tahoe, through Reno/Sparks and empties into Pyramid Lake, or Cui-Ui-Pah as it is known to the Paiute Tribe, on the reservation.

Tom, Axel’s stepfather, says Axel loves exploring and playing in the Truckee. “It’s a great playground for kids,” he says, admiring the catches Axel eagerly raises up in his fishing “cup". The young boy yells out to him when he spies something interesting in the water.

“I sometimes wish kids didn’t have phones for games- they could all be out here,” he says, pointing at the river and trees. Axel brings some more minnows to show Tom. “Very cool,” Tom tells him. They discuss that the crawdads might need to go back in the river as Axel debates keeping them as pets. He can’t figure out what to name them yet, but there are more things to look for in the river and he wanders back off shore, head down to discover more of what the Truckee can offer.

Our Town Reno River Reporting by Dina Wood

The Last Motels Standing in Reno: Horseshoe Motel

This is part of a series of essays with photos on the last motels still standing in Reno. We previously had a series on the last motel residents of Reno. Motels, initially conceived for tourists, increasingly became a last housing option for many, due to bad credit, not enough money for deposits, or not wanting to deal with a multitude of bills and complications, or a first housing option for residents coming out of homelessness. Many motels are now being torn down, after being bought out and razed by slow to act developers, with many vacant lots now dotting the downtown landscape.

take care of yourself 

i haven’t been sleeping much

there weren’t any people around this motel, even though it has twice the amount of guests as the swan inn

it was so quiet 

no one in the office

no one in the back room

no one looking out on their balconies or hearing tvs blare from open windows 

i haven’t been eating much

the shadows that this motel casts are what i loved most about this place

they’re so deep and rich, and stretch up and over everything 

it’s almost like this place was left behind by people, but everyone's belongings were still there

the plants in the office seemed well taken care of

i wonder who is doing that

this motel has a lot of charm to it

it’s the biggest horseshoe i’ve ever seen 

there’s so many little things that add up or go unnoticed every day

i wake up to a sinking pit in my stomach almost every morning 

the dusty red car hidden within the garage window made me laugh

the cigarette butts and ash trays crowded the dashboard

it wasn’t until i was walking away i could hear a child start to cry from a room

and a parent trying to comfort them

but i had everything i needed for the night  

Essay and Photos by Jake Lorge for Our Town Reno

Help Instead of Handcuffs: Reno’s Community Court Back in Session at the Library

Every Wednesday morning, amidst the green foliage that fills the rooms and engulfs the Downtown Reno Library, the Reno Community Court is in session.

Security guards search people, individuals file down staircases, packed lunches are handed out, coffee is drunk, brochures are passed from hand to hand. The weekly session run by Reno’s Municipal Court provides resources and services to a large population of people – most of whom are unhoused individuals – instead of jail time and fines for minor offenses.

“Quality-of-life offenses” are misdemeanors and non-violent crimes such as open containers, urinating in public, trespassing, loitering, disorderly conduct. The majority of these citations are often given to those living on the streets. Instead of sending offenders directly to jail or Municipal Court, Reno Police or Washoe County Park Rangers can give the offender the option of going to this Community Court instead. Offenders for their part can participate, get help and have their community service hours and fines suspended, or receive traditional punishment.

When an individual comes to Community Court for their first offense, they are checked in at the entrance. There is a list of names of the people expected to attend, however individuals are free to come even if they aren’t on the list. These are “service-only” individuals; people who haven’t committed a misdemeanor, but who just want to access help and assistance.

The individual will then meet with a social worker who completes an initial risk assessment and with a case worker who delves further into the individual’s needs. Depending on what’s at stake, they will have the opportunity to visit tables and speak to the many service providers present. The service providers offer assistance in all different sectors; employment, resume building, getting a government-issued ID, clothing, food, substance abuse counseling, mental health, medical and insurance assistance. 

The myriad of different services is important since every individual, and thus their needs, are very different, as well as constantly changing.

Marie Krueger, a service provider from the Reno-Sparks Gospel Mission, explained to Our Town Reno the importance of having so many services available. As well as handing out food, clothing, and furniture to those who need it, the RSGM also offers a free, residential substance abuse rehabilitation program. These are long-term stays, six months to a year. Krueger explained that these are “a last resort for people seeking help, since it’s such a long program.” If Krueger cannot assist an individual, she can point them in the direction of another table with a different service provider.

Attendees are provided with lunches, water, and hot drinks in the courtroom which occupies what is normally the library’s auditorium.

One of the in-court lawyers will meet with each individual, and bring their case forward to the judge.

Here, though, Judge Hazlett-Stevens is not dressed in robes. He’s not sitting in an elevated position either. You might not even realize he’s the judge at first, sitting at a ground-level table wearing a simple polo shirt.

“I like to sit right opposite them, at eye-level. I want to be approachable,” Judge Hazlett-Stevens said. “I want people to engage, speak with, and trust me. Being physically on the same level as them matters. It lets them know I’ve got their back, and we are here to help them.”

When asked if there was a reason for Community Court being held at the public library instead of the courthouse, the Judge explains: “the library is a neutral and relaxed setting. It’s a place of refuge for the unhoused population year-round, to seek shelter from the weather.”

And now, on Wednesdays, it’s a place they know is available to them to seek help, whether they’ve been in trouble with the law or not.

Judge Hazlett-Stevens further explains that the concept of “Community Court” – offering services instead of punishment for petty crimes – began 33 years ago in New York. Programs have been popping up all over the country since. No Community Court is the same – different communities have different needs, and each court will look different depending on the population and community involvement. He explains that “some police officers have really embraced this new system, and others have not, they still choose to go the traditional route and issue tickets and fines. Luckily Reno PD are really on-board with the program,” he said.

Reno’s program was initially started by Judge Tammy Riggs in 2019. In the program's first year, 115 individuals were admitted by the court, according to official tallies. Then, when the COVID-19 pandemic struck in early 2020, Community Court was shut down.

With the pandemic easing, Reno’s community court is back in session in the hands of Judge Hazlett-Stevens, who says his main focus has been to “get it back on its feet in order to meet the needs of the population.”

Relaunching the program was no simple task. They had to reach out to providers and services all over again, redo all of the logistics. Judging from a recent Wednesday though, the demand is there.

Reporting and Photos by Gaia Osborne for Our Town Reno

Local Hard-Money Lender, Montessori Chair Max Haynes Caught in Education Fraud

Major local hard-money lender Max Haynes, who is also board chair of High Desert Montessori Reno, in late December signed a settlement agreement and consent order with the Nevada Division of Mortgage Lending after being caught in a continuing “education cheating scheme.” The information has yet to be displayed at the state level as is usually customary, adding to the lack of publicity this has received.

The settlement document was brought to our attention by a community member who expressed concern that there wasn’t more awareness and state information about this “pay to play” fraud given the amount of money Haynes lends out locally.

A hard-money lender offers short-term loans quickly with high rates for individuals buying residential or commercial real estate and land. Haynes is said to be a key operative in this space in northern Nevada, working on many major projects, with subdivision developers, and according to our sources, the CAI Investments conversion of the Harrah’s into Reno City Center.

The community member wished to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, as they operate in local real estate.

They added that, “this is a highly regulated industry and when something like this happens it should be right out to the public.” They said these types of settlements are usually published on Nevada state websites but that they couldn’t find it there, and found it instead on the national Nationwide Multistate Licensing System & Registry website.

Alpen Mortgage, the Arlington Avenue company run by Haynes, which bills itself as “Northern Nevada's premier private lender, serving both borrowers and investors in Northern Nevada for almost two decades,” wrote back to Our Town Reno saying the fraudulent course credit was due to “a technical licensing matter.” The email went on to say: “Back during Covid 2020 we unfortunately used a dishonest “online” vendor to complete our required continuing education and made a mistake by not catching an automated, wrongly reported, “in person” course completion requirement.  With almost a thousand people and companies in 42 states wrapped up in the vendor education fraud scheme, there was one settlement agreement offered by all states that did not admit wrongdoing but required new education and a new license application, which is now approved and current.” 

The settlement agreement Haynes signed which we were shown states mortgage loan originators got course credit for an eight-hour in-person course in Westminster, California, despite never attending. It also indicated the company coordinating these classes, Real Estate Educational Services, helped them cheat by taking the courses on their behalf.

The High Desert Montessori Reno did not write back, nor did Nevada officials, when asked for more information about the case and why it wasn’t publicized.

Haynes has also served with the Reno Mayor on her Housing and Development Task Force. Hillary Schieve who is running for reelection in November wrote back to Our Town Reno saying she had not heard about the settlement agreement, which also included a $1,000 administrative penalty and having to take more classes to regain licensing.

“The task force has not been meeting for a few years,” Schieve wrote in an email. “It was an all open working group and I believe he attended a couple meetings. Anyone was invited to attend the meetings so many people dropped in and out. The goal was to listen to developers frustrations with our planning department.”

Haynes also comes up in public contribution documents, with his two most recent political donations going to perennial losing Republican candidate Adam Laxalt, and Ward 4 incumbent Bonnie Weber, who has faced ethics complaints in her dealings with developers.

In light of the global financial crisis of 2008, caused by irresponsible lending, the Secure and Fair Enforcement for Mortgage Licensing Act (SAFE Act) was enacted that same year requiring all Mortgage Loan Originators (known as MLOs) to complete continuing education approved by the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System & Registry.

Our Town Reno reporting, August 2022

Catching up with Hagen Sandoval's Side of Reno and his New All Star History Team

The weather in Reno has always been confusing. I’ve lived here for my whole life, but I’ve never found any consistency in the seasons. Winters without a single snow cloud and summers filled with flash floods are more like a coin flip rather than a surprise. On the August day I was out to meet with This Side of Reno, an upcoming mini-series documentary project on the city’s history, gray clouds blanketed the sky, and a barely noticeable drizzle would gently fall every so often. 

This Side of Reno is trying to preserve Reno’s history, through short spotlights of various buildings and other spots of local historical significance.

The plan is to release a series of short videos, approximately ten minutes in length. The first episode, for instance, will focus on the Reno Arch on North Virginia and Commercial. It’s a three-person project between Hagen Sandoval, a 6th generation Nevadan, with experience in journalism and car sales, local historical preservationist Brett Banks and filmmaker Hunter Rand. The team combines skills in scholarship on Reno history and video production, with Banks and Sandoval both having the title of Executive Producer and Host, while Hunter Rand is listed as the Producer and Director of Photography. 

On that cloudy day, I was on my way to meet with Sandoval and Banks. I slightly sped up my pace walking down North Virginia Street as I idly checked my phone and realized I was moving too slowly to make it on time. The road is closed off to car traffic right now thanks to the micromobility pilot project, but Downtown Reno felt the same to me as it always had: a hectic mix of tourists and Reno residents walking between the tall casinos, long alleys and small corner stores.

The cars were gone, but the people were still the same. Not that I was complaining, since the open streets helped me make it just on time to our meeting at Believe Plaza. I looked around as a few other groups loitered around, smoking and chatting as I waited for Banks and Sandoval to arrive. I wouldn’t be there long, probably less than a minute before I saw Sandoval on the other end of the plaza. Once he got a little closer, he introduced himself and handed me a small ziplock bag of stickers and pins with the This Side of Reno logo directly on the center of each.

As we picked a spot to sit, Banks arrived at the same time. A few skateboarders fifty feet or so in front of us rolled back and forth across the mostly open ground. They seemed to be actively looking for small pieces of trash and other obstructions to do tricks over with varying degrees of success. The talented ones occasionally looked around, hopefully expecting someone to watch them. Those who needed a little more practice looked around more sheepishly, seemingly praying for the opposite.

This is a scene that has been played out many times for anyone who’s been to Downtown Reno, but the irony of meeting at the Believe Plaza to talk history was not lost on me. Sandoval told me during our conversation that we stood right on top of the Mapes Hotel that was knocked down a little over twenty years ago. The Mapes Hotel was the main star of Sandoval’s previous aspiration, trying to document and compile as much information about the building as he could. He runs an active Instagram page about the building, gaining over 800 followers by posting historic photos of the Mapes Hotel. Looking at the plaza now, it’s almost hard to believe that the hotel, the tallest building in the entire state when it was first built over 70 years ago, ever existed in the first place.

Sandoval has had six generations of family in Nevada before him, and Banks has had seven. This created a deep connection to the Silver State, and each says they’re one of the only people they know in their twenties to spend time actively seeking out local history. 

“Hagan and I just want our voices out there too, because we are realistically gonna be doing this long term,” Banks said. ”We've put ourselves into a lifetime commitment with the city of Reno and its history.”

History isn’t just a passion project for them; it’s a hobby, too. For fun, they look through listings for interesting photo albums and other undiscovered treasure troves containing tidbits of the Biggest Little City’s past on eBay. If a listing is particularly intriguing, they’ll call each other to coordinate who’s going to be the one to buy it. After explaining that they collect these photos and historical records, some people will part with their photos for free. But one of Sandoval’s biggest recent finds was a cornerstone of the Mapes Hotel. 

“I'm getting yelled at at home,” Sandoval said. “You spent how much on a piece of concrete from a building that no longer stands? Why does that even matter? But to me, this is so important. I pulled this off the side of the road in Sun Valley, because some guy was trying to move it. He had no idea what it was. This is a part of the Mapes. Why is there not more of this? Why do people not know what that is?”

Banks has similar stories about discovering local history. After her grandmother passed away, she inherited hundreds of photos sharing a common thread: a service station over eight hours away by driving in Welcome, Nevada. She started researching, deciding to make the long drive and brought a tent to camp in. After tracking down this service station and talking with the owners, they decided to turn the building into a museum. 

“If I hadn't found those photos and spent the time researching them, that would've been a lost story to my whole family,” Banks said. “Now I have cousins calling me that I've never met in my life, because my phone number's in the museum.”

Sandoval said the first episode on the Reno Arch is planned to be released by the end of the year at the very latest and joked that he will jump in the river if it isn’t out by the end of September. The long-term plans for This Side of Reno include influencing public policy. Banks and Sandoval want more protections for buildings that are classified as historic structures and for the City to implement adaptive reuse of historical structures whenever possible. This is the process of refurbishing or repurposing an older building to have a new purpose in a modern environment. 

“Our goal would be for the City to give more avenues to its Historical Resources Commission to protect our structures when something is recognized as historic and important,” Sandoval said. “We need to stop selling out our history for the promise that the future's gonna be brighter. Because if the past is all gone, what do we have?”

Our Town Reno reporting by Jesse Stone

Last Motels Standing: Capri Motel

mellow

the weather was perfect

it felt so nice to have a summer storm this year

the smell of rain and stormy clouds 

the puddles crowding my feet 

raindrop kisses on my glasses 

i pass by this motel all of the time 

this has become my favorite one

the motels dense, forest green and fading sand colors 

pale blue curtains draped over the windows

little plants at my eyes

i met a dog named luna, she was a sweet girl 

this place reminded me of

moments i’ll never forget

i’ll always keep this between me and you  

it must have been something in the air or whatever they say 

you were the sweetest 

you were the prettiest 

i would laugh

you would smile

you’re something special

i can’t help but feel the same still

and i say all of this with a fond smile

i’m almost done with that book you recommended, damn it’s good

Our Town Reno Photos and Essay by Jake Lorgé

Meghan Ebert, Running for Ward 4 and the People of North Valleys

Running for a Reno City Council seat, Ward 4, that has see-sawed in the past, Meghan Ebert likes her chances in November. She says her message of working for the people of North Valleys is starting to resonate with would-be voters when she meets with them. 

“We don't feel like we're heard out here,” Ebert told Our Town Reno, during a recent sit down interview at a locally owned coffee shop on Golden Valley Road, Superstitions Java. 

“We don't feel like we have a voice. And that's one of the reasons why I'm running. I want to … make sure that we have a seat at the table. We pay the same taxes, but we don't always feel like we're treated the same,” she said.

The incumbent she is facing Bonnie Weber is a long-time office holder. Weber previously served as a Washoe County Commissioner, and won the Ward 4 seat in 2018 against then incumbent Paul McKenzie.  But Weber has lost the seat before, in a 2014 election against McKenzie. Last year, Weber also faced scrutiny from the Nevada Commission on Ethics into lunches she organized. These were attended by developers, herself and staff, and paid for by prominent North Valleys development companies, including one hired to provide water to the 5,000-unit Stonegate project. 

The panel ultimately concluded Weber didn’t break the law but called on the City of Reno to come up with new rules to adequately address similar situations, during which city staff work at closed-door events  organized by an elected official.

Ebert is proud of endorsements she’s gotten from Reno firefighters, Planned Parenthood, the Nevada Central Labor Council , the Northern Nevada Building Trades and the Sierra Club, which she says reflect her values and beliefs.  “I’m very pro-union. I think that they do a great thing for wages and quality of life for workers. I'm very supportive of our first responders and our firefighters. I feel like they need more support as well and funding and, we need more first responders up in the North Valleys for sure with all the development happening out here. We're not keeping pace with the number of first responders that we have in the area.”

In light of this, and recent endorsements (see above postcard), Ebert feels confident, having garnered 1727 votes to Weber’s 2279 votes in the primary.  The third place finisher Dennis Owen got 1358 votes. During his campaign, he spoke out against uncontrolled growth without proper infrastructure, a message shared by Ebert. 

“I like to remind everybody that more people have voted against the incumbent than for her,” Ebert said of one of her campaign strategies, while going door to door, holding coffee talks and attending advisory board meetings.

“I think we have a master plan that we're not currently following,” she said of managing local growth.  “Why aren't we following that? If it doesn't work, then we should be adjusting it. If it does work and we're just choosing not to follow it because developers would like special use permits, we need to reevaluate why we're doing that. We need to look at the big picture here. Are we going to be a cohesive city, or are we just putting in warehouses wherever there's open space? I think we need to look at how we're developing. Are we developing smart? Are we building communities or are we just kind of filling wherever we can with whatever we want without much concern for any kind of plan.”

Ebert has concerns about available resources including enough water and infrastructure.  “You know we need to take that into consideration and also take into consideration the impact to the people that live here … you know, the increased traffic that comes with increased development, what are we doing to make sure that we have infrastructure to keep pace with the development that's happening.”

A mother of three, Ebert has concerns for the future.  

“Because I'm a first time candidate and I don't have any kind of developer ties, I don't have those conflicts of interest,” she said. “I’m doing this purely because I care about my community and what kind of legacy we're leaving for our children. I don't want to raise my kids in a neighborhood surrounded by warehouses. I don't think it's safe to put in thousands of houses without increasing our numbers of firefighters and police in the area. I think we're going to reach a tipping point where we're going to start having property losses, probably loss of life and damages because we're not taking into consideration the people that live here. And that's why I'm running because I really care about my ward. I care about my family and I care about everybody else's family out here.” 

Last year, the City of Reno finally reached a $4.5 million agreement to conclude litigation related to the 2017 Swan Lake flooding in Lemmon Valley, a terrible occurrence which affected her friends and family, and also prompted Ebert to get into local politics. 

“The people that were impacted had water from the Reno Stead sewage treatment facility flood their homes. The city of Reno had an opportunity to settle with these residents to give them funds to fix the damage caused to their homes. And the city council voted against that, not everyone, but in particular, our current representative. That to me is unacceptable. These are her constituents that are affected by this, and she voted against doing what was right and fixing the damage caused to their homes,” she said.

She doesn’t see that situation as a done deal either, saying there still needs to be better treatment of the Reno Stead water facility.  “It's still not considered safe for humans to be around,” she said. “I mean, you can use it for livestock feed crops, but you can't use it in your vegetable garden. It's not safe. We need to look into how we can treat that water to a higher quality, so that water becomes usable. We're living in a desert and we're pumping this water into a lake. It's just dumped into this area to evaporate every day. And last I checked, we're dumping over 2 million gallons of water into this lake every single day.” 

Ebert says she’s a pro-environmental candidate.  “We have beautiful areas of Sagebrush and forest around us. And how do we embrace that? How do we build, or put in trails so we can enjoy these areas and treat them as the asset that they are and appreciate them, and, and not just level them to, you know, put in whatever development that it comes along.” Other ideas she would like to see more include covered parking areas with solar panels above them.

As a professional benefits analyst who does data analysis, financial reporting and audits, Ebert says she would also bring much needed scrutinizing to proposals under discussion at Council.

“I would definitely ask a lot of questions, make sure that we've thought of everything, you know, as far as traffic studies, when we're doing road construction, financial impact,” Ebert said, adding she would continuously seek resident and expert input.  “We definitely need somebody in there that can look at the numbers and analyze the data. And, and again, like I said, just look at the big picture and find out, what's really going to be the best and not just appease developer money. Sometimes things look great on paper, but when you really come down to, you know, the impact to the community, it's not so great. So just really digging deep into that data and not just looking at superficial presentations.”

Ebert has never run for office, and hopes people who themselves feel marginalized, and who say they’ve even given up on voting will consider voting for her or get into the process themselves. 

“That's why I'm running, so many people in this ward are very eager to express their displeasure, but their names aren't on the ballot. So if you are unhappy with things, it is up to you to be that change, or it's not going to change. It will be business as usual. So I urge you to step up and take on that challenge,” she said. 

Our Town Reno reporting, August 2022

Outside and Inside, Local Researcher Seeks to Help Local Plants

“Historically, a lot of the Great Basin, the lower elevations were dominated by plants like big sagebrush, but there's been invasions of non-native grasses, particularly cheatgrass being the biggest one that have changed the way that a lot of the native plants in the Great Basin are distributed,” Robert Shriver said during a recent interview, getting straight into his passion for local plant populations.

Shriver, an Assistant Professor of Plant Ecology & Population Biology at the University of Nevada, Reno, spends his work hours in very different places. As an ecologist, some of that time is spent in Nevada’s Great Basin, some in a classroom and other hours crunching away at numbers and research in his office. Through his work, Shriver said that it’s becoming clear to see that sagebrush populations in the Great Basin have been decreasing, and the way that ecosystems look around Northern Nevada has changed compared to how they looked 50 years ago. 

“These invasive annual grasses lead to increasing fire frequency, which has led to really big declines in a lot of the native species and especially the shrubs in the Great Basin.”

As an assistant professor, Shriver’s work includes teaching and mentoring students, collecting data in the field and using quantitative analysis to identify and find causes for changes in local ecosystems. Finding changes isn’t always easy. Shriver’s work requires establishing so-called transects, a flat line laid on the ground in an ecosystem, and long hours comparing the phenomena he sees in the fields to records that might be fifty years old or older.

“I tend to describe it as mind numbingly boring work in beautiful places,” Shriver said.

“One of the methods that we use a lot is tagging and marking plants along a transect,” the researcher explained. “We’ll go out, we'll establish a transect that we'll return to every single year and along those transects, either map or tag where the plants are, and we'll go back to them every single year, see whether that plant is still there, whether it's alive, how much it's grown and whether it's reproduced and if there's new plants along that. That gives us a really good understanding of what's happening to these populations.”

Shriver said that climate change was a central theme of the research that he does. Specifically, Shriver tries to look at how climate change will affect the United States and the Great Basin. As an ecologist, finding the ways that the world around us has changed and is going to change can help the plants and ecosystems that make Nevada special survive.

“One of the big questions that ecologists try to understand is how ecosystems are going to respond to changing environmental conditions,” Shriver said. “Being able to document that and anticipate where that's going to happen into the future can have a really big impact in identifying and building tools that can both help academics, but also people managing these ecosystems that are trying to anticipate coming changes.”

Growing up in Kansas, Shriver wasn’t surrounded by as much of a diverse range of ecosystems and plants as he does now. After going to university in Wyoming, Shriver became interested in ecology.

“It fills my desire to both be outside and understand the world around me, but, also, I get to come back and do a lot of problem solving, doing data analysis and doing other things that I really enjoy,” Shriver said. “The problem solving keeps me entertained all winter when I can't be outside.”

Our Town Reno reporting by Jesse Stone

Grandpa Wabbit, a Buckaroo with a Banjo Along the Truckee River

Walking along the banks of the Truckee most days in late morning you might feel as though time has warped back to the early days of Reno when buckaroos would come into town from the ranches of the Great Basin for rest and recreation and maybe a little music.

There he is- a cowboy- walking at a brisk pace from his home in Midtown to Idlewild Park and back. Old time music, coming from a modern music box hanging on his side, gives first notice, along with the beautiful vintage banjo hanging on his back, that Robert, often known as “Grandpa Rabbit”, is on one of his nearly daily walks along the river.

With his well-worn black hat and jeans or work pants tucked into a pair of roper cowboy boots, it would be easy to mistake Robert for one of Reno’s earlier residents. And he comes by the cowboy title honestly.

Robert grew up in Siskiyou County in far northern California on a family ranch with five siblings. His parents, who farmed in the south, migrated to the West after World War Two from the Missouri Ozarks and northern Alabama.

“A ranch is a ranch,” he laughs. He grew up listening to his mother play accordion, piano and organ. “I lived with my grandparents in Alabama for two  years, he says. ”I was ten years old when I started playing banjo with my grandfather.”

“You know the first time I came to Reno I was passing through for the Summer of Love in 1967. It was small then, of course. I actually had a friend who came through in 73 and ran out of gas. He wound up working as a dealer in a casino and never did leave and maybe with the price of gas now we should see the population rising even more quickly,” he suggests with a smile.

Robert ended up living all around Nevada and Oregon and raising a family, working at times as a restaurant chef and always back to ranching, cattle and sometimes dairy cows.

“With dairy every day the milk is coming in, so you make quicker money than waiting on beef cattle,” he points out. “When I was retiring, I spent so much time up here seeing my grandkids that my daughter said I might as well stay “

He is proud of the banjo he is carrying. “It’s a 1912 body,” he indicates, showing the beautiful instrument. He saw it on an auction site and it was being ignored because of a crack in the neck. 

“Somehow I ended up getting it,” he laughs. With a new neck and skin, the five string plays sweetly now.

On most days he stops to play for anyone who wants to listen, sometimes along the river, but nearly always at Idlewild Park where the ducks gather to hear him play.

“People thought I looked like a Disney character so they started calling me ‘Grandpa Rabbit’. I just love playing for people,” he adds and then says slyly “if people enjoy it that’s great. And if they don’t enjoy it, I enjoy annoying. I sometimes like to sit and play on my neighbor’s porch on a cul de sac and if strangers make the wrong turn they think ‘I saw that movie’ and turn back around quick.”

Since his skinhead banjo can’t handle if the weather is too cold or damp, there are days when Robert gets his walking in with just the music player on his back sending out cowboy songs of the past. “Back in the old days people carried a lamp to warm up the skin,” he says. “But I can’t really carry a lantern these days.“

Reno may be outgrowing its Biggest Little City nickname, but rest assured, buckaroos still walk the streets and the ducks approve.

Our Town Reno reporting by Dina Wood

Last Motels Standing: Easy 8 Motel

quiet on our side 

it doesn't get any easier 

a man sat at the bottom of the staircase screaming for someone in their room

over and over again

hurry up, hurry up

there wasn’t anyone else

the woman at the office let me walk around without any trouble, explaining myself and my purpose 

she said she wouldn’t answer any questions, i get it

the motel next door told me to leave 

i can’t blame them 

the Yamaha motorcycle almost took on a life of its own

i have never seen anything like it

you have to look out for yourself for once

don’t keep waiting but i’m wrapped up in intimate memories 

this terrible memory

i love seeing older RVs around town

it was the first thing i noticed when i was walking up

there was lots of police activity across the street at another motel 

quiet on our side, i'd rather keep it that way 

i’m just here to document what will be removed at one point 

just like me

removed 

Photos and Essay by Jake Lorgé for Our Town Reno

Craft Fair Benefitting Grieving Local Prenatal and Neonatal Parents

The Pregnancy & Infant Loss Support Organization of the Sierras (PILSOS) is a non-profit organization founded in 2013 focusing on supporting parents through one of the hardest times in their lives. A craft fair for fundraising and awareness will be held at Katie’s Garden at the Bridge Church, one of the Reno urban farm sites run by Farmily. The event is free to attend and includes goods sold by local craftsmen and a raffle. 

“We have an amazing lineup of talented artists that are providing them with the opportunity to buy local, handcrafted, unique items to give as gifts for themselves or their loved ones,” Daniel Fisher, Executive Director of PILSOS, explained. “The admission is free. Katie's Garden is a lovely, peaceful location. There is ample parking. They can enter the raffle for their choice of items at a low cost that in turn benefits a local non-profit.

For Jacque Hibbs, a parent, PILSOS provided a safe space to talk about her family’s loss. Being connected to and in the company of other parents who have experienced similar pain gave Hibbs a sense that she wasn’t alone.  

“Your grandparents, they lived a full life,” Hibbs said. “They had a full life, they did all the things. But when you lose a child, your child hasn't had that chance. I think it's harder for people to connect with that and be able to figure out how to console you as a parent or even converse with you as a parent, because it's not a loss that a lot of people have dealt with.”

In previous years, PILSOS has fundraised through a yard sale. It was becoming difficult to keep up with the huge amount of work needed to sponsor a yard sale, so PILSOS decided to try their hands at a craft fair this year.

Nineteen local vendors will be taking part, with some of the proceeds going toward A Time for Remembrance event hosted by PILSOS later in the year, a special time for parents to remember their lost loved ones. 

“Reno is not a very big place and everyone, at some point, is going to experience a form of loss,” Hibbs said. “We all do, but when it's your child, it hits different. If you go, you're supporting an organization that is helping people get through life. Losing your child is life altering and you would be supporting a cause that helps moms and dads be able to have somewhere to go and talk and be able to remember their child.  Because in our society, sometimes we're expected to move on a lot quicker than we would like to.”

There will also be a raffle during the August event, where every one of the vendors who has signed up for the event have agreed to donate one of the items from their booth, which will be entered as prizes for the raffle. One ticket can be purchased for one dollar, six tickets can be purchased for five dollars and 26 tickets can be purchased for $20. Participants will have their phone number and name written down, meaning they can win the raffle even if they aren’t in attendance for the drawing.

Our Town Reno reporting by Jesse Stone

UNR Student Helps Organize International Climate Justice Forum

“We're getting to the point where I don't know exactly the amount of time that we have left to try to mitigate the climate crisis, but it is something that has been placed on our generation,” Zane Taylor says. “We've seen that policy makers are not willing to work with it, especially among the older generations. So it's really thrown on our generation specifically.” 

Taylor, a UNR student in international affairs, and summer intern at the Unitarian Universalist Association office at the United Nations, has been busy helping organize an online webinar on climate change scheduled for August 4th.

The event will be free to attend and feature a diverse set of speakers. Participants who register online but don’t attend the webinar will receive a Zoom recording of the event after its conclusion. Titled “More Than We Inherited: Youth-Led Climate Justice Initiatives”, Taylor says the name reflects the responsibility of the younger generation to take action and preserve the Earth’s climate. 

The United Universalist Association office is one of many faith-based organizations operating at the United Nations. The world body is more known for its veto-marred Security Council meetings and different aid organizations, but it also has offices for different religions. “It is a faith that originally started as a denomination of different Abrahamic religions, so Christianity, but we've shifted away from the scope of having a shared deity or a set holy scripture,” Taylor said of Unitarian Universalists. “We go off of seven principles that hope to reconnect us to the interdependent level of life. Those include stuff along the lines recognizing the inherent work and dignity of every person, the right of conscience and the use of democratic processes within our congregations and within society as a whole.”

Taylor said that the upcoming climate event welcomes and hopes to inspire participants from all generations and faiths, whether that be persuading someone to join a local organization, signing a petition, or urging a local politician to vote a certain way. 

“We're trying to get youth involved in the climate fight because the youth and at the domestic level is where the change needs to happen before it can go international,” Taylor said. “A lot of people think that the United Nations has all this power to affect a lot of concrete policies where the United Nations is mainly a system to get international collaboration.”

Anyone interested in registering for this event can visit https://uua.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJErf-uurDIiHtGOrt_tWulCwrhg6mwLmzcA

Meeting Dan, a Steady Presence in Downtown Reno and a Master of Recycling

In a city that seems to rebrand itself daily, the figure of a quiet man, pushing what appears to be a rolling landlocked boat buoyed by full rounded trash bags, has been a steady presence for nearly four decades.

Dan speaks to those who speak to him, but spends much of his day traveling silently and slowly through Downtown and Riverside, sometimes picking up things people have left for him to reuse and recycle, sometimes stopping to rearrange his bags, maybe occasionally having a smoke, tipping his ash into an ashtray he keeps on the top of his carefully balanced cart.

A hello gets a “Huyup” back from Dan and maybe a wave. He appears content in his solitude, walking every day for hours on end.

“The doctor says I’m in good health, so I just keep walking ,” he says quietly.  “ I used to take all kinds of aluminum cans to recycling,  but they quit taking them, so I don’t now.” It worries him. “You shouldn’t waste things,“ he asserts softly. 

Dan continues to sort as he talks about moving here from San Jose those many years ago. “I’m really a Nebraska boy- from Omaha.”

He has found a home in Reno, a home that doesn’t involve doors or a roof. “I have a doorway I sleep in,” he says, pointing toward Downtown. “About a mile over there. Every day of the year,” he smiles.

Dan used to eat more often at St Vincent’s and still uses some of the street outreach food pantries and public meals. But mainly now he says he finds food that people have thrown away, in bins, behind restaurants and stores. “I eat it- there’s plenty of good food wasted. And I feed the birds with it,”  he adds.

The bag he is arranging  has partial loaves of bread, still in the wrapper, and an open bag of carrots. He finds another plastic bag to sort the food. People in the neighborhoods he walks through often give him extra food, a sandwich, something they have cooked, or on a hot day, bottles of water and juice.

When asked how his life in Reno makes him feel he cracks one of his fleeting soft smiles.

He looks up and he says: “I’m good. I’m just happy, happy, happy.”

Our Town Reno reporting by Dina Wood

Reno Tattoo Shops Helping Unhoused School Children for First Day of School

Four tattoo shops in Reno, Aces Tattoo, Evolution Tattoo, Wolf City Tattoo and Lasting Dose Tattoo are running a community shoe drive, accepting donations of new shoes, clothes and underwear until August 6th to help unhoused or poorly sheltered Washoe County students, of which there are several thousand.

For Jake Griffin, a tattoo artist at Aces Tattoo, the effort is a way to help children get back some dignity.

“Your first day of school is the red carpet for kids,” Griffin said. “I remember being in school and seeing the kids that had nothing get ridiculed and mocked. It's not their fault. They’re kids, they can't afford to even buy their own wardrobe. My objective is to help as many kids as possible to avoid that scrutiny that comes with showing up for school on your first day, and everyone's showing off their outfit, and these kids don't have anything.”

The items gathered by the Shoe Drive will benefit the Washoe County School District’s Children in Transition program.  The Children in Transition program is designed to connect homeless students with any of the resources they need to succeed in their academic careers. That’s anything from backpacks and school supplies to musical instruments, and also basic clothes and shoes.  

“Seeing it work, seeing your community actually care and come out of the woodwork to support these kids, I think is amazing,” Children in Transition Program Coordinator Colin Usher said. ”It's twofold. You've got that community part which brings tears to my eyes. Then, at the end of the day, it's the students that get the support they need.”

The Shoe Drive comes after a separate charity event gathering toys for children living in motels last year.

Sitting at a red light, presents for nieces and nephews filling his car, Griffin looked across the street and saw kids playing at a motel with a soccer ball and sticks, still having the time of their lives. Thinking the kids deserved just as much as anyone else, an idea for a charity drive brewed in his mind for a few years until he mentioned the idea to his fiancée and fellow organizer, Grace Tecson. The motel drive gathering presents for children came to a sudden fruition, and the support from the community for this event was overwhelming to the point Griffin was left with leftover toys and backpacks.

This is when the partnership between the Washoe County School District and the tattoo shops was born. Fielding calls from parents looking for help on a daily basis according to Usher, the Children in Transition program could help distribute the presents and goods that the tattoo shops collected.

“Community partnerships are really important and each one contributes something different,” Usher said. “For them to come up with an idea for shoes and socks is great because a lot of organizations don't think about that sort of specific thing. You're gonna set them up first day of school looking good, feeling good, not so much standing out, but just blending in which a lot of these kids need.”

According to Usher, the Washoe County School District identified over two thousand Washoe County students as in transition last year. Factors involving the COVID-19 pandemic and the potential for children in transition to remain unidentified mean that the real number is likely even higher. 

“Oftentimes it's just inadequate housing,” Usher said. “It could be that they're doubled up with their aunt or uncle or grandmother or grandfather or another family. Some of them are unaccompanied youth, so they don't have a guardian or that adult in their life and they're living with another family, couch surfing essentially.”

Working at a tattoo shop, Griffin said he sees people from all walks of life, from bikers to lawyers, come through his doors.  Aces Tattoo has good relationships with other nearby shops, who agreed quickly to the idea of the Shoe Drive. The main goal is always the children, but the Shoe Drive is also an opportunity to show people that the stigma around tattoo shops doesn’t match up with reality. 

“Our shop has been open 27 years,” Griffin said.  “Before all this gentrification and before this neighborhood was Midtown, we were here. We've never left. We try to give back as much as we can, and we just want to show people that we care about our community, just as much as anybody else, if not more.”

Only new items will be accepted as donations.  Shoe sizes from 5T to 14Y are being accepted, and the shops are taking donations until August 6th.  Anyone who donates will be entered into a raffle, with first place earning a $500 gift certificate, second place a $250 gift certificate and third place eligible to earn merchandise from the shops. Raffle tickets can also be purchased at a price of $20. 

“We need as much help from the community as possible,” Griffin said. “Whether it be a simple pair of socks, underwear, five bucks from your pocket, 10 bucks or a $20 pair of shoes. People spend that in an iced tea at Starbucks, you know what I mean? Six bucks can make a difference in the kid's life, not just that day.”

Our Town Reno reporting by Jesse Stone

Feemster Name Honored at New Hug High Location

As the new Hug High School prepares to open its doors at its location in Sparks, it now includes the Feemster Family Resource Center.

Adrienne Feemster, 46, the granddaughter of the late Dolores Feemster, has been fighting to have the grounds of the old Hug High School, scheduled to become a Career and Technology Education Academy, named to honor the civil rights community activist. That effort was dealt a blow when two years ago the Washoe County School District instead chose to honor Debbie Smith, a former Nevada State Senator.

“I feel like there’s no compromise and one doesn’t negate the other,” Feemster said, when asked if the naming of the center was enough. “I feel like they were separate occurrences, separate issues.”

While she restated the importance of listening to the the community when renaming schools, she said she is keeping a positive outlook, and moving forward. 

The new Feemster center will provide families with guidance and referrals to local resources to improve their wellbeing. “It reminds me to focus on celebrating the honor to be able to see the Feemster name be connected with the school that my grandmother loved and cared for,” Feemster said.

She is currently gathering mementos and old yearbooks from her grandmother’s 30 plus years at Hug for a display case in the new center.  Among her many pursuits, she had advocated for the First Nations and Heritage clubs at Hug, “so students of all backgrounds could celebrate who they are and be proud of their roots and their heritage and make common ground.” 

Dolores Feemster died in 2018, at the age of 89, after a full life of helping others, including her persistent efforts to have local affordable housing built for abused women, senior citizens and families in need.

Our Town Reno reporting by Ariel Smith

Last Motels Standing: The Reno Royal Motor Lodge

july goes quick 

this motel appeared out of corner of my eye as i was driving around

a woman was smoking a cigarette on her porch as i began walking up

no one at the office

no one else around 

there were plenty of cars parked for at least someone to come around, i thought

this motel seems to be so tucked away as it is towered over by the Silver Legacy and the Eldorado 

sometimes, one of my favorite things about photographing these old motels is seeing the different sort of cars that are parked outside in the lots

like the lincoln for example

the deep grill on the front of it

the worn down paint job 

it just all seems so fitting 

they put an imaginary person into my mind of who might be the one driving it around, staying at the motel

one man emerged from his back corner room 

cargo shorts

collared blue, striped golf shirt 

except he didn’t get in a car, he made a quick turn behind the motel and disappeared 

a couple began staring at me as I was walking around taking my last few photos

and not just noticing me, but staring at me, following my every move, and didn’t stop looking at me until i rounded the corner and left 

heads on a well-oiled swivel, locked onto my every move

strange  

Photos and Essay by Jake Lorge for Our Town Reno

Washoe County's Bethany Drysdale Answers (Some of) Your Questions about the Cares Campus

We recently got to go on our first tour of the Cares Campus, and asked the community if there were any questions they would like asked.

Television crews got priority for questions as the tour ended, and time was running short, so we emailed a list of your questions which Washoe County officials said they preferred to respond to by email. This often leads to answers with careful, administrative language, as you’ll see in this report. 

We prefer in person interviews during which we can read body language and also ask follow up questions if we want to dig deeper, but we will take the information we can.

Several of the questions we asked by email concerning details of current and future finances, and where money is coming from, were not answered, even after several follow ups.

We did get indication that Volunteers of America and Karma Box Project will remain as operators of the shelter and the ModPod camp. 

“Washoe County Housing and Homeless Services (WCHHS) follows all local, state and federal regulations governing procurement as applicable. For both the Safe Camp and Emergency Shelter operator, an RFP was released as part of a competitive procurement,” Bethany Drysdale,  the Media and Communications Manager, wrote as to that process. 

We haven’t been able to find financial disclosures or salaries yet concerning Karma Box Project, but we will keep looking.

“For the Safe Camp, only one proposal was submitted by Karma Box Project.  It was a responsive and responsible proposal and we engaged contract negotiations,” she said. The Karma Box Project will be paid a little over half a million dollars per year, in a contract to operate the camp which could run until the end of June 2026. We have yet to be able to find salaries within Karma Box (see above).

“For the Emergency Shelter, two proposals were received, one from Volunteers of America and one from Adams and Associates,” Drysdale said. 

A May Washoe County staff report recommended to go with VOA until the end of June 2024, for $6.5 million annually, with the option to renew for three one-year periods thereafter.  Several employees of VOA Northern California and Northern Nevada make over $200,000 which local advocates for the unhoused have indicated feels excessive.  

The inside of the Cares Campus remains bare with staff working at open desks, right by rows of crammed metal beds.

Amid reports of women feeling threatened, Drysdale said this has been taken into consideration. 

“We have added security measures such as the bag scanner and metal detector at the entrance, and added more security personnel,” she wrote. “We try to get women into Our Place or other areas of assistance, but we will not turn women away, so it’s important to separate the men’s and women’s sleeping areas.”

Concerning requests for law enforcement and emergency services, Drysdale said “staff utilize the new REMSA Nurse Helpline for triage and 911 for emergencies. For medical emergencies REMSA and City of Reno Fire Department are dispatched. Additionally, Mobile One Docs are on site several days a week and soon will be present five days a week offering medical care to participants. Staff calls 911 for emergencies, as the Nevada Cares Campus is a Washoe County facility the Washoe County Sheriff's Office responds when dispatched.”

The tour took place during a cleaning day.

We also got some answers and promises to address the problem of the persistent lack of running water on the compound. 

 “Is there now safe running water for the compound's water supply, and/or drinking fountains rather than buckets being filled as was the case initially?” we asked.

Drysdale wrote back:  “Drinking water (including bottled water and water dispensers) is currently available on site. Construction starting at the Campus has allowed for a temporary refillable water station with plumbed water to be installed – we anticipate this to be ready the beginning of August. The new buildings will include several different refillable water stations.”

We will check back in August to find out if this water improvement is in effect.  

Drysdale said there is already guest Wi-Fi available that people can access. She also wrote the campus is ADA compliant for all services available, including for people in wheelchairs and walkers. “Both Case Management and Behavioral Health services are available to all participants,” she wrote.

“Are there available clothes at campus for people to change into if they have accidents?” was another question from the community we relayed to her. “The Campus has spare clothing on site,” Drysdale wrote. “However, if clothing is not available for any reason such as size, staff will coordinate with Catholic Charities to assist.

As far as questions on success rates for people going from the campus to housing in the past year, Drysdale sent the above graphics.

Amid concerns for those who are temporarily excluded or “86’d”, Drysdale said they can still access their mail.  “Does the County find that expelling people for a few days or longer is effective?” we also asked?

“Sit-outs are designed around best practices and are established for the safety and wellbeing of everyone on Campus,” Drysdale wrote back. “Participants are able to appeal the decision and provide input as to why they should be allowed back earlier than their sit-out time.”

 Concerning food being served at the campus, which has often been criticized in our interviews with people staying at the compound as unhealthy, Drysdale said: “Catholic Charities, a nonprofit organization, through its St. Vincent’s Dining Room, continues to provide both a hot lunch and a hot dinner meal to the Nevada Cares Campus emergency shelter. Since initial concerns of the meals, staff has not heard additional concerns from participants. Additionally, through process improvement measures, Catholic Charities now identifies each meal before serving.”

Would-be volunteers also asked how they could help, or if they can go into the compound and meet with a person.

“We have invited and continue to invite volunteer groups to sign up for volunteer opportunities on our Community Engagement page, on the Washoe County Housing and Homeless services site, under Nevada Cares Campus. If volunteer groups would like to organize a special event on Campus, they are welcomed to select “Other”. Our volunteer coordinator reaches out to plan and organize special events. To sign up, please visit this page, here,” she wrote. 

Do you feel some of your questions were answered? Do you have any more? As always, let us know. We are trying to foster more transparency, empathy and progress in how this community helps the unhoused, including at the still very much work in progress Cares Campus.

Our Town Reno report, July 2022

Zoe Bray, Fostering Eco-Art, Reuse and Reaching Back to Her Basque Heritage in Reno

On a recent summer day in the oasis of Katie’s Community garden on the Bridge Church compound, a group of kids and their moms worked on the finishing touches of their “eco-art,” blending different nature parts they collected into plate-sized collages.

Zoe Bray, an established portrait artist, anthropologist and journalist, and soon to be published children’s book author, gently guided along the process. She showed participants how to make glue from a flower, water and a bit of sugar.  If she had more time, she said, she could have collected resin from trees to skip the sugar and go “completely natural.” 

“You don't need all this artificial stuff, but you have the most amazing nature around you and get yourself familiarized with that, and learn to care about your environment in the process. And so I think that's empowering to both children and adults and very freeing too,” Bray said of the eco-art experience.

A few days earlier, Bray had a similar calm demeanor, coordinating free drawing and painting lessons at the Riverside Farmers’ Market, while her own two kids played nearby.

“I think it’s exciting and empowering to be involved in what's going on around you,” she told Our Town Reno this week from her tree-filled backyard, not far from the Truckee River.  “Art is a wonderful way of getting people to connect with each other and their environment, and also to provide a kind of relaxing and meditative moment. And I think this is particularly important, in the kind of fast-paced, media saturated world we live in just to have this opportunity to work in peace and to be able to share this experience with others.”

Bray, a Franco-British artist, currently enjoying her second stay in Reno, says she’s looking for more grants to hold similar workshops.  In June, she used a Creative Aging grant from the Nevada Arts Council to teach drawing and painting still-lives at Revel Rancharrah. 

Previously, she’s held workshops in museums, to break the intimidation factor of such settings. 

“If you haven't been immersed in that growing up, you don't quite know how to engage with it or look at it, or, you know, it might sound like a very elitist thing, art, but no, just make it approachable, accessible and get people involved and engaged,” she says of her engagement method.

Bray first came to Reno over ten years ago as an Assistant Professor at UNR with the Center for Basque Studies, linking the arts and anthropology departments. She then became a visiting professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, before returning to the Biggest Little City. 

“Reno really does provide an extraordinary quality of life,” Bray said of her return. “For me, this easy access to nature, to the wilderness is just so important, really valuable. And we are so fortunate to be able to have that here. I can just take my bike and in 10 minutes I can be further up the river, swim in the Truckee River. I can go for a hike and just, you know, completely disconnect from the stresses of urban life and just refuel myself and my soul. And that's just incomparable. It's just something that's just invaluable.” 

 She also appreciates local Basque connections, which she is herself on her mother’s side, and which has guided part of her artistic work with a series of portraits on Basque-Americans and her research in anthropology on Basque identity.

 “My mother's grandfather was one of these immigrants from the French side of the Basque country. So this was in the early 19 hundreds, when the Basque country in France was one of these pretty poor regions, he had the opportunity to come to the American west,” Bray said of her heritage. “And at the time, the opportunity for Basque people then was to find employment as a sheepherder. So he was one of these that came to Nevada. He was somewhere between Eureka and Ely. And then he actually came back to the Basque country and settled back home. So he kind of paved the way for me to then come here in a very different and more privileged situation.” 

“As a portrait painter, I paint in this kind of traditional way using oil paints that I make myself if possible in my own canvas. And I, I look for a long time at nature. So I ask people to pose for me for several, several hours, several days, so that I really can get to know them properly and also really observe them. And it's really on the basis of light, how light falls on your face,” Bray said, when asked about her series of portraits of Basque-Americans.

Bray also writes about local Basques for different media publications, including the French Basque newspaper Mediabask which recently ran her article about how the Great Basin Community Food Coop was founded by two grand-daughters of a sheepherder emigrated from a village close to hers.

A new children’s book she illustrated and wrote called Amatxi is about a girl who discovers strange sounds by the Truckee River with her Basque grandmother. Bray will be doing an artist’s residency in the Basque County in the fall and working on a second part to the book.  She’s also been working on a  series of illustrations of children interacting with the world around them, from making their own compost to climbing trees, and running free, much like her own kids often do here, where Bray will return. 

Another project she’s pursuing is trying to get eco-art incorporated into local school curriculums.

“It’s even more urgent in really urban settings where some children just have never been anywhere, but a small city park. Every school should be able to have some kind of garden, some natural setting where they can just hang out, that's not always just tarmac and metal and cement,” Bray said. 

Bray cofounded Reusable Reno with Lakshmi Albright to get local businesses “to make the shift from single-use foodware to reusable foodware, in order to address the serious problem of trash and microplastics increasingly present in our watershed and environment in general. My work giving lessons in eco-art is connected to my activism with Reusable Reno, showing people how you can easily make this beneficial transition from a single-use and disposable lifestyle to a more sustainable - and economical - one by going 'reuse' with so many simple acts (like making glue from organic things rather than buying glue in a plastic bottle!),” Bray wrote to us in an email after our interview.

In Reno, in addition to trying to help limit trash (see above), she’s also worried about expanding sprawl and the lack of accessible housing.  “If you don't have a certain income level, just to be able to go anywhere, to be able to, to live with basic standards is really challenging. So he city has come to this point where it really needs to work this out and give [opportunities] to people of lower income without having to cover huge distances to go to work or to do anything. And this for the sake of equity, but also for the sake of the amazing nature that we have around us. We're lucky to have so much public land and this needs to be preserved. We can't be solely crawling up the mountains and now to the desert, just so that we can have our comfortable house with a front yard and a backyard. We need to rethink that for the good of everybody.”

Being an artist here can be challenging, though, whatever its rewards. “It’s not going to make you comfortable or rich,” she concluded. “So that's why it's important to have something else going on the side.” 

Our Town Reno reporting, July 2022

The NNLC, Breaking the Cycle of Poverty with Reading and High School Diplomas

The Northern Nevada Literacy Council is a non-profit organization aiming to help raise literacy rates in Nevada, which also offers free access to a program that helps adults get their high-school equivalency, regardless of how much education they already have.

“I say it's never too late,” Adrienne Santiago, Executive Director of the NNLC, said.  “I say come on in to come talk to us, let us get your assessments done. You may only be here for a month and have a high school equivalency. You could be that close, and it might take a little bit longer, but even if it does, we'll work around your schedule. We will help you with all the barriers that are preventing you from doing this.”

The NNLC offers this class and a few other different types of courses to their 500 students. These programs range from an eight-week course giving students a rundown to get their United States citizenship, classes helping adults receive their high school equivalency, a family reading program and a career development program for young professionals. 

The professional development program represents an option for young students who, for one reason or another, can’t finish their high school programming.

NNLC works with other organizations like the Eddy House, another non-profit working with unhoused youth, to reach out to students. To help students get into the long-term career they want, NNLC helps students create a long-term career plan. They assist the student in reaching those goals on the education front by reimbursing them for equipment or tuition. In some cases, NNLC will even reimburse a student’s employer for wages to help the program’s participants land a first job.

Just like the program for getting adults their high school equivalency, it’s free of charge, and students are given a pretest to determine their education level before they enter the program.

“Even if a youth has a high school equivalency or high school diploma, we still do that assessment,” Santiago said.  “We don't want to put them into a training program at TMCC or anywhere if we know that their reading level is not to where it needs to be, because then it'll just be one more knock on them to say I can't do this.”

Since the NNLC doesn’t charge for their services, the only requirement to enroll in any class is to be over 16 years of age. Santiago said she believes that higher literacy is better for everyone in the community, from better career outcomes for students and potential employers. Even something as simple as handing out a manual to an employee becomes easier with a more literate community.

“There's so many people lacking high school equivalency, and it's not something that a community can be proud of,” Santiago said.  “ I believe really strongly that as communities work together, we need to work together to address these issues. I really think that it affects so many people. ”

In Nevada, a state that was recently ranked 49th in education, NNLC sees literacy and all of their community members as a way for community members to move into new career paths and get a better life for themselves and their children. Even if an adult isn’t interested in getting a high school equivalency, the non-profit’s reading program offers an opportunity for parents to get their kids involved in reading. 

“Why do we always have to be last?” Santiago said. “Why is literacy not at the top of the most important things? It is the foundation for everything. It is a foundation to break the cycle of poverty. It's the foundation of entering into training, furthering your education. It's a foundation for their children.”

NNLC is currently looking for more instructors for their adult learners. Santiago said their current team was dedicated to the job, and good instructors will find joy in helping an adult, young or old, reach their dreams. 

“We’re always looking for teachers and if anyone is interested in working with adult learners, we'd love to talk to them,” Santiago said. “I just think that everyone needs to just know that NNLC is here as an option, especially for our youth and helping our youth break that cycle and have options.”

Our Town Reno reporting by Jesse Stone

James and Jennifer- Living Rough Together in Reno

Smiling, Jennifer gets off her bike that is pulling an overpacked trailer filled with the necessities of her life. She goes over to the bench along the Reno Riverwalk where her partner, James, is sitting next to his own overloaded bike and trailer. She hands him a cup filled with soda she has gotten from a nearby fast-food restaurant for free after asking a manager.

James and Jennifer have been together on the streets in Reno for 14 months, or, as Jennifer laughs, “in street time that’s like 300 years. When you live inside you go to your jobs, you might see each other an hour or two a day. We’re with each other 24 hours a day.”

James got out of prison two years ago and met Jennifer, who moved here from California, fourteen months ago. They have been inseparable ever since, preferring to live in the rough outside rather than in a tent or shelter.

“I worked with the Red Cross in New York after 9/11, driving workers around, helping feed first responders. I’ve had hard jobs, I’m a good worker, " James says emphatically.

“Then I went to prison. And I will never contribute to America again. I think of my life out here on the streets as a living protest. I was kept as a slave in prison. I worked all sorts of jobs, got paid next to nothing. I even worked out there on the wild horse ranch, since I had experience in ranch work. I saw a lot of abuse there- of prisoners and horses. And think of all those prisoners who work on the fire crews, they get paid so little guarding our lives. When I left prison after all those years they gave me 38 dollars.”

He continues, obviously impassioned. “You know the Thirteenth Amendment? It bans slavery, except for prisoners. Maybe if you have an amendment against slavery there shouldn’t be a caveat to enslave prisoners.”

Jennifer opens her bright daisy printed bag to show the blister packs of Narcan that they always carry with them for emergencies. James tells of the time he used CPR for five minutes on someone who had overdosed on Fentanyl. “I learned it in the Red Cross. We’ve brought more than one person back to life with this,” he says, pointing into the bag of nasal sprays.

Jennifer gives him a hug as he continues. “Theoretically, the homeless shelter is a good idea, but you have to remember that a lot of the people on the streets have been to the penitentiary or jail. So, they get out and maybe were in a gang- I wasn’t, I was just an old guy, and you go in the shelter and it looks the same. Putting all the people in one place will never work. It’s violence waiting to happen.”

When asked about the possibility of living in one of the pods that Washoe County also has for the unhoused at the Cares Campus, he says he likes living outside and that small spaces and dormitories bring back too many memories of prison.

Jennifer, who, like James, is 43, says she tries to take care of “her guy” and others on the street, too. She is a mother figure to many of those who she checks on daily. Both of them identify themselves as “bad alcoholics” and the only other drug they use now is a little marijuana.

“We could die from withdrawal, “says James. Jennifer often finds herself alone in the middle of the night going to find alcohol. “I was chased by a guy outside of the liquor store at two the other morning,” she says with a small quaver. “The guys are gross out here when you are by yourself. Men all think I’m a prostitute and I am not.”

James says he would really like to go to medical detox to try and get off alcohol, but he worries about leaving his bike and his trailer with just Jennifer watching them. He has used drugs in the past, but both say the big drug on the street in Reno now is Fentanyl, which they both hate.

Living without a tent is not easy, but they both prefer it. “As soon as you have a tent up the cops can get you for camping,” James explains. This was Jennifer’s first winter sleeping rough and she has grown to like it. She does wish there was a place to take a shower and misses some of the razed motels where friends who could offer her one used to live.

There are local businesses where they can wash up and use toilets, and when they can’t find one, they both insist they would never use the sidewalk as they have sometimes seen others do. “The outside is our home,” Jennifer says. “Honestly, we save pizza boxes and bags to poop in if we have to, then throw it in the trash.”

They have a routine for food and there is a constant search to find money for the alcohol they need. "Tuesdays and Saturdays the hippies feed us. Thursdays it’s the church. Sundays we sometimes find the burrito people. We can get our EBT [Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) is an electronic system that allows a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participant to pay for food using SNAP benefits] refilled at the welfare office.”

James says that the best outreach in Reno is the VA. “I’m not a vet, but say there’s just one vet in a group- they help everyone. Those guys get it.”

Jennifer again leans into James’s neck. “We try to take care of each other and love each other. That’s all we can really do, right? “

Reporting and photos by Dina Wood shared with Our Town Reno