Emerging from Our Shells
By Christina Barr
The New Year has begun in earnest - filled with meetings, emails, and deadlines - and I confess that I am having difficulty recovering from my holiday break of sloth-like pajama days filled with generations of traditions, friends, good food, board games, and puzzles. Autumn is my favorite time of year for being out and about, but winter is for delicious hibernation. In Reno, we've been subsumed with snow, which has helped create a sense of tucking in, but I'm actually very excited about the year ahead.
At Nevada Humanities, our staff members spend a lot of time taking the temperature of the state to help us chart our next programs and activities. We want our work to be relevant and meaningful for all Nevadans in every corner of the state. For the first time in several years, it feels as if we are regaining the even keel that we lost in March 2020 with the rest of the world and the arrival of COVID-19. It has been hard to digest that we are three years into our new pandemic/endemic lives, and 2023 feels like it will be a watershed year. Disruption, it turns out, is an incredible opportunity to embrace change and deepen connections, especially when things start to level out and we can finally take some confident steps without the fear of losing balance.
I am very excited to join with our staff to be the architects of this transformation for Nevada Humanities. We have big vision and big ideas, and we can't wait to hammer them all out and share the results of our work. At the heart of what we do is our understanding that the humanities are both tools and process, heritage and culture, ideas and identities. We know the humanities to be lived and that we all share in what it means to be human. That connective tissue is elemental and the ultimate solution to the challenges that we face in our communities and our nation. This will be central to our work this year. Our programs will foster connection in fun and exciting ways, in ways that open our minds to the power of telling our stories and to the art of listening. Please join us as we emerge into 2023 and present another year of discovery and belonging for Nevadans everywhere.
Photo by Shreesh Taskar.
Christina Barr is the Executive Director of Nevada Humanities.