First comes love

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

Nice, totally not-at-all controversial subject on the cover this week—sex education. Check out Kris Vagner’s feature story on page 11 for more about the battle in Washoe County about proposed changes to the sex ed curriculum.

Personally, I can still recall the giddy, embarrassed excitement I felt on elementary school sex ed days. This was here in Washoe County, but way back in ye olde 1980s. The classes were helpful. I remember they cleared up some misunderstandings I had about female anatomy based on what I had seen in Playboy magazines—which, for some strange reason, in those days, at least, presented women’s genitals as beginning and ending at the mons pubis.

And that seems as good a segue as any to an announcement that I haven’t yet made in this column: My fiancee, Margot Choltco, and I are expecting a baby. (We had sex—several times, as a matter of fact—in order to make the baby. Education!) Hooray! We’re beyond excited. The baby is due Dec. 1, but could come before Thanksgiving. So, if I suddenly disappear from the paper, you can rest easy, knowing I’m off on Baby Island, soon to return with long, flowery, poetic ruminations on diaper smells and sleep deprivation.

(And the paper will be fine. The news will keep happening. The arts will keep happening. And my colleagues here are pros.)

Margot and I already have three wonderful kids between us—my son Clifford, and stepdaughters Josephine and Viktoria—but this will be our first baby with DNA from both of us. The horns, hooves and tail have not yet appeared on the ultrasounds.