I don’t snow much

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

Is it just me, or does the RN&R affect the weather?

I can’t even recall how many years we’ve done our Winter Guide with no snow in the picture. We used to run it in November, but we’d often publish with no white stuff on the ground and none in the forecast. Just a bit irritating, so we moved the issue closer to the actual first day of winter, Dec. 22.

Not that this minor little issue is some proof of climate change—the world does not care when we publish our Winter Guide—but changing weather patterns always bring the issue to my mind. Does anyone else remember that it was almost a cliché that the ski resorts would be open on Thanksgiving?

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OK, now I’m distracted. Some 41-year-old woman just called me on the phone describing herself as an entrepreneur asking why a woman can’t walk down Reno’s streets without getting leered at. Seemed like a legitimate question so I listened. Then it became, why does Reno have 16 paroled sex offenders living next to a pre-school? Then it morphed into Reno City Councilman Dave Aiazzi threatening to murder her because she was going to run against him for City Council. And, believe or not, the conversation actually deteriorated from there.

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But she was my second public contact of this fine morning. The first was a nice enough guy who came to the front desk. (Karen endorsed him as “seems normal.”) He wanted to know how Reno City Councilwoman Jessica Sferrazza could endorse a business called “Clothes Mentor” in a television commercial. “Does she work there?” he wanted to know, and how could it identify her as “Reno City Council Representative”? Doesn’t it seem like a conflict of interest? I know it’s not unprecedented for an elected official to use their public position to promote private business. I guess we’ll hear soon enough. You can see the video at http://youtu.be/FJwKistQnYs.