Pine Nuts

Golf was invented or discovered, whichever you like, in Scotland in the mid-1400's, and became hugely popular almost overnight. Golf in Scotland in 1460 was so popular that one could not walk to the post office without getting hit by a golf ball.

Before the pandemic arrived I used to get to read the Declaration of Independence as Mark Twain, orchestrated to a Marine Corps flyover upon finishing with these words, "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our Lives, our Fortunes, our sacred Honor." Va-voom!

UPDATE 3:39PM: The Monarch Fire is approximately 2,500 acres and currently 5 percent contained. No structures are immediately threatened at this time and the fire is believed to be lightning caused from the previous day. Responding agencies include East Fork, Central Lyon, North Lake Tahoe, North Lyon, Story County, Tahoe Douglas and Truckee Meadows Fire Protection Districts, Reno Fire Department, Bureau of Land Management, Nevada Division of Forestry and the U.S. Forest Service.
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As of 9:45 a.m. Thursday morning, the fire in the Pine Nuts in Douglas County, which has been named the Monarch Fire, now covers a total of 1,794 acres.

Multiple agencies are on scene to try and control the fire which is thought to have been caused by a lightning strike during yesterday’s thunderstorm.

UPDATE 5:18 p.m.: the acreage of the fire has been updated to 1,600 acres.

UPDATE 4:12 p.m.: the acreage of the fire has been updated to 800 acres.

UPDATE 3:21 p.m.: Douglas County releases the following press release:

Minden, NV- Several agencies including Bureau of Land Management, Douglas County Sheriff's Office, East Fork Fire, the US Forrest Service and the Nevada Division of Forestry are currently responding to the Monarch Fire, a Brush fire in the Fish Springs Pinenut Creek Rd area.

No structures are threatened at this time.

No active road closures at this time.

Douglas County is asking the public to please stay aware of your surroundings. The fire is moving possibly East of community. Stay aware and alert in the event of wind changes. The fire is currently estimated to be around 800 acres. (subject to change)

Please Call 911 if you need help. We have sent out a cell phone message to those in the area but you may also receive the alert in other areas in the valley.

As a reminder, please make sure your cell phone is signed up for our reverse 911 emergency alert notification system. You can register your cell phone here.

We will continue to update you as the information becomes available on this page: https://www.douglascountynv.gov/cms/One.aspx

UPDATE 3:10 p.m: a second fire was reported near Topaz Lake.

UPDATE 2:31 p.m.: the acreage of the fire has been updated to 250 acres.

UPDATE 2:19 p.m. the acreage of the fire has been updated to 80 acres.

UPDATE 1:56 p.m.
A press release was issued regarding the fire which states the following:

East Fork fire is currently responding to a Brush fire named the #MonarchFire in the Fish Springs Pinenut Creek Rd area, and is asking the public to please stay aware of your surroundings. The fire is moving possibly East of community. Stay aware and alert in the event of wind changes. Call 911 if you need help. Fish Springs, South and East of the community and covering the Sierra Spirit Ranch. We have sent out a cell phone message to those in the area but you may also receive the alert in other areas in the valley. We will continue to update you as the information becomes available.

East Fork Fire Protection District responded Wednesday afternoon to a brush fire off of Pine Nut Road in Douglas County.

Well, here we are, alive and mostly well, after almost a third of a year without sports. I didn't think it was possible. Thank goodness I've had Mark Twain to keep me in a state of moderate good cheer.

Yesterday while out for a walk, I ran into four middle school boys on skateboards and hailed them, "Okay, men, I know you've been out of school, but I've got a pop-quiz for you."

My father was of the Model T Generation, born the year the Titanic went down, 1912. His was a sober generation, living through the flu pandemic of 1918, Prohibition, the Great Depression and WWII. If that won't sober up a generation what will?

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

Farmers have always been the world's busiest, hardest-working people. Farmers are perhaps the only people whose profession commands universal respect. Between milking the cows in the morning and getting that milk to market, and collecting the eggs at day's end and getting those eggs to market, who has time to date?

Since I started walking instead of running I'm enchanted by the simplest things. I guess trading "runner's high" for "walker's enchantment," is not such a bad trade.

America's Red Light District originated in Dodge City, Kansas, where train crews would leave their red lanterns outside when entering a bordello so they could be located in the event of an emergency, and America's madams were quick to embrace this tradition as an excellent way to advertise.

Trousers came into being when it was discovered, before Christ, that hand-to-hand combat was most unpleasant while wearing a robe, not to mention the discomfort endured while riding a horse while wearing a robe.

We all remember our first, our first love, our first kiss, our first colonoscopy. The procedure was developed in 1969, but was overshadowed by the moon landing. There were no headlines, "Colonoscopy Arrives! What is it? Don't ask."

Staying at home alone gives one time to pause and ponder. Today I'm evoking the war in Vietnam. This was an American booboo that was partly my fault. I was in college, 1966, majoring in pizza and beer, when I received a lottery number in the mail.

A gifted poet friend of mine, Jack Wright, penned a verse to welcome a flattening of the COVID-19 curve.

Like everybody else nowadays, I'm lugging a heavy heart around in my chest. So I like to escape into the past now and again, and dream about how things might have been. I would like to have been in Boston for the Tea Party for example, and I picture myself at the Bell In Hand Tavern, holding forth in front of my fellow Bostonians.

In full disclosure, I opted out of pre-med when confronted with analytical geometry, but have never lost my interest in good health. So I stand in awe of our country's show of courage in our sudden shift of values. A new energy is emerging in America, a new altruism. With the arrival of COVID-19, mastery of fear is our new normal, bravery our new mantle.

They told us the C-rations they were delivering to us leathernecks in Vietnam were prepared and canned for troops fighting long before us in Korea.

Feeling it the right thing to do, the only thing to do, really, I scratched out a short letter and delivered it to our community hospital.

What I know about gorls you could put in a gnat's ear. It's not because I haven't tried to understand gorls, I have tried to understand gorls. They make great mothers and grandmothers, I know that. But you show me a man who says he understands middle-aged gorls and I'll show you a big fat liar. Though just because we can't understand gorls does not mean we can't love gorls. There is something comforting and contenting about a gorl's voice, a gorl's laughter.

The first European to see America, so far as we know, was a Norseman named Barney, somewhere around A.D. 986. Barney was wading ashore, holding his shoes, when he encountered some Native Americans who were not in a good humor that particular morning, and they gave Barney the bum's rush. So he absquatulated (cut stick) in his dinghy, and rowed like crazy for home, anywhere but America.

One of the nice things about portraying characters out of the past is the feeling you get when you stand where they stood and see what they saw. Within this confluence of past and present, there is a palpable kinetic link to be embraced and enjoyed.

I've long wondered how the marathon run came to be 26 miles in the first place. So I did a little research and found the history to be fascinating. It all started, like so many other events in history, after tossing back a few beers, away back in 490 B.C.

Was there humor to be found in the Impeachment Trial? You bet there was. To begin, you can't ask a senator who is used to jumping up and pontificating every five minutes to sit still and listen to somebody else for eight hours without interrupting.

A rescue at sea is always riveting, but the 2020 New Year's Eve Rescue gave me chicken skin all over. In full disclosure I have not ventured out to sea since our honeymoon when my wife did most of the fishing and I did most of the crabbing. Unless standing on shore, anchored in sand, I have no love for the sea. To me a sea cruise is being under house arrest, but with a chance of "drownding."

The following is a short conversation between a mother and her high school son.

What the world needs now is a strong shared narrative that transcends politics, a strong shared narrative that transcends "us verses them" and guess what? That very thing is in the skunkworks. I can't tell you exactly what it is, for that would jinx the whole mission, but it's coming our way soon, perhaps by the end of January. Stay tuned to these pages.

I ask you, how many of us lucky ducks have fallen back on the fine art of keeping bar when our life's calling falls a little short? I'm confident I do not stand alone in the oasis. There are thousands of us grateful "one time cocktologists" who succeeded in their life's work thanks to the glorious and oh so enjoyable salvation of, "Yo-barkeep!"

Music, I have to believe, is the best medicine on the shelf. It cuts down on our doctor bills and keeps us from sourin'. So I went to the Jubilate Holiday Concert in Truckee to cheer myself up and put a spring back in my step. It turned out to be the best decision I could have made.

Time to put a log on the fire, crank up Vince Gueraldi's "Linus & Lucy" and invite the neighbors in for an egg nog. It matters not weather those neighbors are Christian or atheist, white or of color, so long as they have good-fellowship in their hearts and a smile in their eyes.