Summer of love

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

I’d like to introduce and congratulate Jen Huntley and John Barrette right off the bat on becoming our new columnists.

Jen has chosen to call her column “East of Eden,” it’s a reference not just to the Bible passage or Steinbeck book and movie but to Wilbur Shepperson’s study of Nevada culture, East of Eden, West of Zion. Jen is associate director of the Academy for the Environment at UNR, and has a doctorate in Environmental History of the American West. She’ll take up the liberal standard.

John’s column is called “Reviled and Revered” and comes from a poem by E.A. Robinson about Abraham Lincoln and from a group of poems called “The Town Down the River” dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt. He’s a long-time political writer and journalist who got to Nevada about a year ago from the Midwest. An old-school Republican, John’s going to bat for the side of conservatism.

We’ll have images of them pretty soon—what can I say, we just picked the columnists last week and great art takes time. I’m sure Michael Grimm will get them to me when he can take a break from chasing that baby around. Plus he promised to redo Bruce Van Dyke’s mug, and I know a bunch of people will find that a burden lifted.

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Now that the paperwork’s taken care of, let me wish you a happy summer. That’s RN&R uber-arts editor Brad Bynum (AKA the newly engaged) running around in the bird suit. Since everyone we know is counting pennies, we wanted to help make this summer as active but low budget as possible.