By Staff of Nevada Humanities
Nevada Humanities announces Nevada Humanities CARES: Emergency Relief Grants for Nevada Cultural Organizations that will provide rapid-response, short-term operating support for Nevada nonprofit humanities and cultural organizations facing financial hardship and duress resulting from the COVID-19 health emergency.
By Michael P. Branch
Tennessee Williams wrote that “…time is the longest distance between places.” That’s how it feels as we wrap up our second month of coronavirus quarantine and wonder what the future holds. Time seems to stretch out before us, becoming distorted and malleable as the days blend together imperceptibly. We look toward a horizon that recedes before us, refusing to remain in view.
By June Sylvester Saraceno
Our breed was a brooding type,
menfolk in barns and garages, silent,
thick fingers turning tools.
Those hands could snap a shoulder
back in place, or drown a litter
of unwanted pups. They did
what had to be done, without a fuss.
By Mark Salinas
Measuring the amount of space between objects has been occupying my mind, again. It seems everyone has dusted off the old home sewing machine and has committed bobbins and pinking shears to at-home Project Runway challenges, creating facemasks for friends, family, and even strangers.
By Aliza Pantoja
Sometimes I forget my name and where I am because I have a dissociative disorder that alters my identity, my memory, and my connection to the world. It can be difficult to feel successful when I struggle with the simple upkeep of normal social and professional personas. I forget that although I have no choice but to adapt, my adaptability is a strength.
By Heather Korbulic
The birds piss me off these days. Their incessant, merry chirping seems tone deaf to the darkness that fills day after blurry day in quarantine. Dear little finch – shut the hell up – I’m trying to be miserable here.
By Autumn Harry, Tsanavi Spoonhunter, and Jarrette Werk
As Indigenous Peoples, our place-based narratives connect us with the ancestral world- geographically, spiritually, and physically. Due to the continued impacts of colonialism, Indigenous communities within North America are actively advocating for their rights to be recognized and respected within their ancestral homelands.
By Susanna Newbury, Lauren Paljusaj, and Anne Savage
Photographs showcase history through the art of images. As objects, they represent shifting cultural styles and attitudes of times (and mediums) that no longer exist in the flickering novelty of the present. As Oliver Wendell Holmes warned in 1859, their invention trained us to hunt and collect images as glimmering appearances, in his words, like the skin and hide of trophy hunters. Photographs carry with them the possibility of leaving lives formerly lived to dissolve, mirage-like, in history’s distant viewfinder.
We asked our board of trustees what they are reading during the pandemic. Here are some favorite reads from some of the Nevada Humanities Board of Trustee members.
Read MoreBy Alicia Barber, PhD
In times of both calm and chaos, history provides critical context for our lives. Most would agree that a knowledge of past events and decisions is essential to understanding our government, our institutions, our cultures and traditions.
By Andrew Church
I once read that only 24% of Nevadans were born in Nevada. The rest of us are migrants, pioneers, transients, exiles, and opportunists of a modern sort. But in spite of our varying origins, what we hold in common is that we all came here, to the Great Basin that encompasses most of Nevada and beyond. Which raises the question, does that commonality have any significance in who we are?
By Dr. Joe Crowley
Submitted by Jane F. Tors
In mid-July, 1965, Joy and I spent a week at Plumas Pines, California, and decided to drive down to Reno to see the University of Nevada campus. I had accepted a one semester job there, beginning in January, 1966. Joy dropped me off at Morrill Hall, the first campus building, and, as I learned later, still one considered to house the heartbeat of the university. Just north of it was a long, leafy, lovely space known as the Quad.
In celebration of National Poetry Month, enjoy readings from Ashley Vargas, Elizabeth Quiñones-Zaldaña, Samuel Piccone, Emilee Wirshing, Jarret Keene, and Jennifer Battisti.
Read MoreBy Jarret Keene
Coyote skittering the blacktop
Jackrabbit rip-zagging a tumbleweed
In half
Jet plane blasting
Across a blood-orange sky
And where are you, darling?
Read MoreBy Melissa Bowles-Terry
An old joke: A university is a loosely organized group of scholars, united only by their complaints about parking. We live and work in our departments, mostly: anthropologists hanging out with other anthropologists, chemists bumping into chemists. There are few places we routinely encounter one another outside of our discipline-specific spheres.
By Paul Michelsen
This is how you write a poem
You make the hieroglyphics
do a little dance, then
let them make sweet love
How you remember
your loved ones
The living and the dead
By Stephen Siwinski
“Good deal.”
That was Dad’s way of saying something was satisfactory, his highest form of praise or a way to wrap up a conversation that had gone on a little too long. It was a utilitarian phrase that could be unfolded and used in any situation like a trusty pocket knife. Dad loved deals.
By Michelle Aucoin Wait
While God’s sunshine plays around the little tomb where her remains are buried, by the side of her second husband, and her sons and daughters, Marie Laveau’s name will not be forgotten in New Orleans. The Times-Picayune (17 June 1881)
By Staff of Nevada Humanities
One positive side of social distancing is spending time with some good books. Here’s what our staff at Nevada Humanities are reading.
By Stephanie Gibson
As I hole up at home, the rhythm of the day – rise, run, coffee, child wrangling, commute, work, home, dinner, more wrangling, bed, repeat – completely upended, I’m trying to establish some routines that make this new normal feel more, normal. Besides taking many deep breaths, spending time researching how one homeschools, and setting up my Nevada Humanities home office, here are a few things that bring some peace, joy, and connection to my days: