Double Down with Nevada Humanities
Welcome to the Double Down blog. Our blog highlights the voices of people from around Nevada with thought-provoking humanities posts. We invite you to dive in and explore.
By Elizabeth Allen Berry
The grand earth
knows not
of time passing
Not of movement of matter
Great watcher understands
the ethereal state of nature
The perception of bodies
that collect and land fruitless
Skin that rots and decays
Gradients of long forgotten coffee stains
Unknowing of
the nectar within
By Kathleen Kuo
As we settle into another Nevada summer, I fondly remember my move to Las Vegas from the Midwest in the summer of 2019, and the many sensory “firsts” of desert life I learned that year. I remember my apartment parking lot smelling of chocolate chip cookies baking on a sheet pan someone had left in their car; the next week that same car filled the air with the perfume of slowly roasting hot dogs (I make no recommendations as to the food safety of either of these preparations).
By Scott Dickensheets
Hey, you’re old.
Tell me about it. I didn’t use to be. Then, suddenly, whammo. “Old age,” quoth James Thurber, “is the most unexpected thing that happens to a man.” True in my case.
Surely you had some inkling ...
Well, I don’t mean suddenly in a bodily sense. I’ve had crunchy knees since JV football, and my back has been 85 years old for a decade. No, the suddenness was more about, I dunno, headspace.
By Lindsay Wilson
This year the river through the trees
has much legroom, but the ducks care nothing
of depth, or sandbags in piles by the doors,
or the old ex-cons who used to sit here watching
water slide into the Great Basin. Those men
loved words and the cigarettes you pretended
to smoke back then because of a woman.
Some days you want a story from an old man
who meant leaving when he said river,
and who believed in the currency of cigarettes.
Begin playing as I leave a little late for work—
my girlfriend getting in the shower,
crying minutes ago, feeling overwhelmed.
The first song is a wordless tune about love
which I consider skipping as I coast down
Charleston Blvd. when a man and woman
too young, too clean, dart across the street from a 7-11.
By Matt Malinowski
A brilliant red glow hung in the sky over the mountains to the north of Las Vegas as the Aurora Borealis put on a cosmic performance for one night only. This interstellar light show had locals and tourists looking away from the neon glitz of the Strip and up towards the stars. The aurora was a sight to behold and a rarity this far south— it was also a reminder of Nevada’s nuclear past and a looking glass into our atomic connections to the universe.
By Sheila Bock
In 2016, I began conducting research on how graduating college students personalize their graduation attire, giving focused attention to the ways many graduates transform the tops of their graduation caps, or mortarboards, into sites of creative expression.
By Lisa Gavon
Artist, builder, and renegade, Rolling Mountain Thunder exhibited ideas that encompassed cutting edge thought politically, environmentally, and spiritually. He was a modern advocate of individual freedoms, but operated on the assumption that the best part of life was lived with compassion for other human beings.
By Julian Kilker
What work does photography involve? How can it document the world around us? Photographers have explored the intersections between the technologies at play and the humanity it can portray since the field’s beginning.
By Jesse James Ziegler
Nevada Poetry Society Challenge Poem for March 2024
♾️
There aren’t enough hours in the day
Not enough moments in a life
Reflect
Surrender to the obvious
Humbly plead your case to the wind
Lean in
Moments shared widen across time
Elongating experience
To feel
When the bees swarm
around the lavender
you gently shush them
as you carefully part
the branches to free
the dried stalks, still
fragrant when their day
is done.
By Petit Monstre
Odyssey of the artist, a blank canvas is where you started
picked up a pen and the begin was actually the end of the old you,
dearly departed.
Now we have gathered here today not to lay rest to the soul but to set it free, strap on your seatbelt, things might get a lil unsettling.
By Dustin Howard
Reno has been my adopted home for six years now, and in those six years, I’ve developed a true love for the beauty of the untamed West and the drama of the natural landscapes around us. The history of our state, and indeed, our country, is a brutal one. We are born from war–even Nevada’s state motto, “Battle Born,” acknowledges this provenance.
By Courtney Cliften
The smell of wet dirt and onions from the Perry Farm
constricts the entire town with undistributed wealth,
masks the crystal, chemical-mixture stink
from tiny apartments chalked throughout the streets.
Children ride bikes down Main street
to buried jars of coins saved for hot summer days…
By Donald M. Scott
In April MGM+/Amazon Studio will begin filming a mini-series version of George R. Stewart’s ecological novel, Earth Abides—a milestone in the rediscovery of the pioneering ecological author who was inspired by Nevada.