Personal project

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

I wrote this week’s cover story. It’s a look back at the history and vision of the local arts nonprofit Holland Project, as the organization prepares to celebrate its tenth anniversary. In some ways, it feels like a story I’ve been working on for a decade.

I became this newspaper’s arts & culture editor in 2008, not long after Holland started. My beat was covering local art and music, and the Holland hosts both, so over the years I’ve written dozens of stories about art exhibitions, concerts and other events they’ve presented. I’ve attended other events simply as a patron—sometimes glancing around the room and noticing that I appeared to be the oldest person present.

And, full disclosure, I’ve performed at several Holland events over the years—mostly with my bands. It’s also worth mentioning that some of my closest personal friends have worked there, served on the board or been involved in other ways.

More to the point, I belong to that same generation of frustrated Reno kids who launched the organization. Growing up here, I had experiences very similar to the ones that the Holland founders describe in the feature story. The older I get, the stranger it is to think that, as a teen, my friends and I would routinely drive down to San Francisco, see a concert, and then drive back the same night—and then go to school at like 7 a.m. the next day.

Anyway, this is still a small town, and that little nonprofit has generated a lot of goodwill over the years, partly through its collaborative spirit, which has positively affected many local lives, including mine. But I know I’m not the only one.

On a different note, I wasn’t able to attend any of the protests this weekend … but fuck the ban. Fuck the wall.