Desert Companion - February 2023

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By Jen Avison Smith

BIG

Klash

February’s most fun gatherings, outings, and performances

35

Are artist residencies and sports upstaging theater shows?

By Mike Weatherford

36 TRENDSETTER

How to look and feel like a queen, by a drag up-and-comer By

Kelly Stith

38

WRITER IN RESIDENCE

My desolation and hope on the loss of a Joshua tree refuge

By Meg Bernhard

28

DINING

The chef who brought an on-demand oyster business to the desert

By Sarah Bun

Miniatures artisans and collectors find a home in Las Vegas By Oona

Robertson

PHOTO BY Mike Hill

PHOTO BY LAURA DOMELA

Editor’s Note

SICK AND INSPIRED

Last summer, I was diagnosed with Valley Fever, a fungal infection that can attack a person’s vital organs and nervous system, causing cerebral meningitis and even (rarely) death. Don’t worry — I’m fine! Direct your compassion to people like the young mother of a toddler who reached out to our online support group for help following her lung transplant, or the 13 percent of nonelderly Nevadans who are uninsured, or non-white people, who tend to get get subpar care.

So, if I’m okay, then why share such personal information? Because it’s brought home the healthcare system shortcomings I’ve reported on for years. I saw first-hand what it’s like to spend months visiting multiple physicians just to get a diagnosis … only to learn there’s no local specialist in it. Felt the anxiety of missing work due to an illness with no cure (and, potentially, no end). Confronted the possibility of paying thousands of dollars out of pocket for treatment at a California specialty center that my insurance won’t cover. Gave my history over and over, emailing records between providers, because they don’t talk to each other.

When I related this experience to Dylan Wint, director of Cleveland Clinic’s Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, he said it was a great illustration of what’s wrong with Nevada’s (and the U.S.’s) healthcare system: We do illness care, not healthcare. We’re reactive rather than proactive, narrowly focused rather than taking a broad view.

I talked to Wint for our feature, “Healthy Imagination” (p. 55). We asked him and other longtimers in healthcare to give us their no-holds-barred opinions on how to fix what’s broken. I expected sweeping visions like “a single-payer system.” What we got were surprisingly basic suggestions: make preventive care more affordable, increase funding to attract more nurses, integrate mental health into primary care. Far from disappointing, their answers suggest that the solution to the problem is within reach — if only the political will to change is there, too.

Okay, that’s a big ask. But while we’re waiting for Carson City miracles, there are other things we can do to feel better. Try a weird fitness routine (p. 18), take a hike (p. 64), or volunteer to steward a wilderness rock writing site (p. 46). It’s only February. We’ve got plenty of time to make 2023 the year we (finally) get well.

To your health!

Heidi

Sarah Bun is a cookbook author; lifestyle, health, and wellness writer; and functional medicine certified health coach. Her writing has appeared in both national and local magazines across traditional and digital media. One time, she drove solo across half of America, interviewing influencers who have defined their road in life for Roadtrip Nation. She is working on her second book.

Clement Gelly is a writer and artist currently based in Las Vegas, where he is an MFA candidate in creative nonfiction at UNLV. His writing has been featured in Hazlitt and VQR, and he has curated and exhibited artwork in Las Vegas, New York, and Hull, U.K.

Veronica Klash loves living in Las Vegas and writing in her living room. Her fiction has appeared in the Wigleaf Top 50 and has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes. She also serves as the associate editor of OKD Magazine. If your definition of a pita does not include the word fluffy, you can’t be her friend.

PRESIDENT & CEO Mark Vogelzang

COO Favian Perez

EDITOR Heidi Kyser

ART DIRECTOR Scott Lien

ASSISTANT EDITOR Anne Davis

DESIGN INTERNS Alyssa Noji, Ryan Vellinga

ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES

Allison Hall, Markus Van’t Hul, Britt Quintana

REVENUE SYSTEMS SPECIALIST Marlies Vaitiekus

WEB COORDINATOR Stanley Kan

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Nicholas Barnette, Meg Bernhard, Soni Brown, Sarah Bun, Yvette Fernandez, Clement Gelly, Jason Harris, Brent Holmes, Veronica Klash, Jana Marquez, Alec Pridgeon, Oona Robertson, Ryan Slattery, Jen Avison Smith, Kelly Stith, Lourdes Trimidal, Mike Weatherford

CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS

Gregg Cairnes, Ronda Churchill, Mike Hill, Brent Holmes, Bronson Loftin, Delphine Lee, Jeff Scheid

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ALL THINGS

IDEAS, CULTURE, FOOD, AND OTHER WAYS TO USE THIS CITY

VISUAL ARTS

Dreams Deferred

Janna Ireland’s photographic exploration of Paul Revere Williams’ work is powerful in its intimacy

BY Brent Holmes

I sketched the preliminary plans for a large country house which will be erected in one of the most beautiful residential districts in the world, a district of roomy estates, entrancing vistas, and stately mansions. Sometimes I have dreamed of living there. I could afford such a home.

“But this evening, leaving my office, I returned to my own small, inexpensive home in an unrestricted, comparatively undesirable section of Los Angeles. Dreams cannot alter facts; I know that, for the preservation of my own happiness, I must always live in that locality, or in another like it, because … I am a negro.”

The exhibit is Janna Ireland on the Architectural Legacy of Paul Revere Williams in Nevada . In it, photographer Janna Ireland explores Williams’ work in the state. Following its four-month run at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, the show took up residence in Las Vegas, where it will be through the end of May. This statewide exhibition sheds light on the life and work of the architectural giant.

“As another Black person, reading about some of the things that he had to go through is super difficult,” Ireland says. “And sort of trying to imagine myself in the same circumstances and thinking about how I would behave and whether I would have had the tact that he had to have to build these relationships with people, and just all the things that he had to put up with, was sort of difficult to think about.

Aquote by architect Paul Revere Williams looms over a current exhibit at the Nevada State Museum: “Today

JANNA IRELAND / COURTESY OF NEVADA STATE MUSEUM

… I felt a personal connection to some parts of the story, and I also felt some gratitude for him, for others to come before me for going through the things that they went through, which in the end made my life.”

Williams’ work is a cornerstone in the bridge of Black architectural history, with creations as iconic as the Beverly Hills Hotel and as unassuming as a low-slung home in Las Vegas’ historic Beverly Green neighborhood. Williams’ accommodating style and welcoming interiors gained him the nickname “architect to the stars,” with residences for celebrities such as Lon Chaney and Frank Sinatra in his portfolio. But he grew far beyond Hollywood, creating notable structures across the U.S. By the end of his life, Williams had produced more than 3,000 buildings, many of which he couldn’t access before the abolition of Jim Crow laws. He became the first Black member and fellow of the American Institute of Architects, designed housing for middle- and lower-income communities of color, and paved the way for future generations of Black architects to develop their careers.

Williams’ notoriety — and in some ways creativity — were hampered by the racial politics of his era. Though he produced structures with many distinctive elements, his body of work was subject to the stylistic whims of his clientele. Walking through Ireland’s exhibit, one can only imagine what Williams would have accomplished with wings unclipped by racial subjugation. Would he have been recognized

alongside architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, and Frank Gehry as definitive examples of architectural excellence? Or, to state this inversely, imagine what Wright’s career would have been if, like Williams, he’d had to fight for clients and institutions to recognize his humanity, let alone genius.

Ireland says she began shooting for the project six years ago, following an email from Barbara Bestor, an architect and executive director of the Julius Shulman Institute in Los Angeles. “Barbara thought that it was time for somebody to do some work about Paul Williams and got my name from my former professor James Welling. And that’s how the project began,” Ireland says.

Nevada Museum of Art Associate Curator and Outreach Director Carmen Beals

ACHITECTURE IN ACTION

With designs scattered across the valley, William’s work is breathtaking in full-scale, but equally impressive when its details are viewed upclose.

expanded Ireland’s project through Nevada. During a short presentation in grad school, Beals says, she learned about the African American architect who did the Guardian Angel Cathedral and La Concha Motel, and became mesmerized by his work. “When I found Janna Ireland, I loved that she developed the work in black and white, to take away the distractions of color so you could just focus on these beautiful, innovative designs,” Beals says.

The Nevada Museum of Art awarded Ireland the Peter E. Pool Research Fellowship so she could focus on Williams’ Nevada work and create never-before-seen images for this traveling exhibition.

Ireland displays exceptional photographic skill, using her eye as an extension of her intuition. These are not simple photographs

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captured for the sake of documentation, but lyrical interpretations that engage Williams’ work at its fullest. Ireland’s eloquent vision gives a refined perspective on the way in which Williams made spaces simultaneously extravagant and comforting. Each image thoughtfully emphasizes structure and form. Luxuriating in the grandeur of the overall construction, while caressing the finer details with a lithe intimacy, Ireland acts as a master conductor interpreting Williams’ genius composition. In her work, we share the experience of the space, as it would be engaged by a visitor or occupant.

“The whole body of work is so diverse,” Ireland says. “Coming to Nevada, one thing that I noticed was … the use of materials that kind of spoke to the landscape, or felt authentic to the landscape, to the culture in that place at that time. So, lots of knotty pine, and other materials and structures that dealt with the area as a place.”

An essay by historian Claytee D. White, a looping documentary produced by PBS Reno, and a display of structures that have been demolished or altered round out the exhibition, underlining the depth of Williams’ mark on the Silver State. The Neon Museum, which has preserved La Concha’s lobby, has also partnered with the Nevada Museum of Art to offer educational events during the exhibit’s run.

In recent years, Williams has had a global renaissance. Recognition and celebration of a master who lived with dreams deferred is cold compensation, but compensation nonetheless. What is architecture if not the housing of life, the place from which all one’s entanglements branch? Janna Ireland on the Architectural Legacy of Paul Revere Williams in Nevada is a necessary experience for anyone who calls this place home and seeks to understand our collective history and future. ✦

On February 17 at the Nevada State Museum, there will be a symposium on Williams’ work including Ireland and White, in addition to museum curator Brooke Hodge and historian Alicia Barber.

OUTDOORS Uphill Slope

Are Black ski clubs the key to making the mountain accessible to all?

BY Soni Brown

The midwinter sky above Carolyn Haywood Wright made the ski slopes in Lee Canyon look blue-tinted. It was 1980. Wright, in her mid-30s and skiing for the first time, accelerated through the lessons. She enjoyed feeling of the undulations in the snow with its shallows and grooves.

“They usually say Black people don’t do snow; they don’t ski,” Wright says. “Skiing down the mountain and ending my day sipping on a hot toddy while listening to music and conversation with friends seemed like heaven on earth.”

Wright grew up going to Mt. Charleston and wanted to go skiing, but time and energy were scant. It took another impetus to connect her feet to skis. That came when Wright attended a Lake Tahoe gathering organized by the National Brotherhood of Skiers (NBS), a group that helps get Black people on the slopes.

Founded in 1972, the NBS brought together 13 Black ski clubs around the country to identify and discuss problems and subjects unique to Black skiers. The Las Vegas chapter — Sierra Snow Gliders, Inc. — was created in 1991 to further the goals of the NBS, which wanted to channel and develop snow-sports athletes.

“I thought it was so awesome to see all those Black folks skiing and all that,” Wright says. “Growing up in Las Vegas, we had our part of town, but as far as being with adult (Black ski) professionals on a ski slope and in parties and meeting new people from all over, it was very exciting.”

Wright’s experience with NBS put her at ease while skiing. She joined the Sierra Snow Gliders, where she currently serves as the president and is guiding the club back from pandemic dormancy. In this, she faces an uphill climb. Members are aging. To entice younger members, the club has expanded to include all winter sports,

as well as travel. Yet it, like many Black institutions formed as an armor against racism and discrimination, confronts a larger question: Do Black ski clubs still need to exist, since skiing is marketed to anyone who wants to participate?

THOUGH SKIING AND the outdoors are represented as free and open to all, many Black people feel apprehensive entering a predominantly white space. Data from the National Ski Areas Association’s 2021-22 participant demographic survey indicate that 88.7 percent of ski resort patrons are white. Asian and Pacific Islanders and Latinos represent 5.7 and 5.5 percent, respectively, while African Americans account for a mere 1.5 percent of overall participants.

According to Adrienne Saia Isaac, the association’s director of marketing and communications, skiing and ski resorts’ history play a part in the lack of diversity. In the 1930s U.S., skiing was done by “primarily white men,” Isaac says. A post-World War II boon in skiing and the creation of ski resorts were prompted by veterans of the 10th Mountain Division ski troops. They trained at Colorado’s Camp Hale for combat in the Northern Italian Appenines.

“They came back and decided to open ski areas,” Isaac says. “I think it’s actually kind of clear that systemic inequity took over from there, just given the timing of where the country was at that point.”

Black people weren’t legally allowed to be wherever they wanted until segregation laws were struck down in 1964. Lackluster implementation of civil rights laws contributed to slow integration of the slopes well into the 1970s, right around the time the NBS formed. The number of Black skiers at NBS’ first gathering in 1973 in Aspen caused so much panic among the white patrons that the National Guard was placed on high alert.

As for the future, Isaac says that, from an industry perspective, diversity is a fact, especially among people age 25 and younger. They are both the most racially and ethnically diverse generation in U.S. history — and made up the majority of visitors to ski slopes last season. To increase participation, ski resorts are trying to combat the perception of exclusivity.

“Representation matters,” Isaac says, while acknowledging that one patron feeling welcome in a space doesn’t mean everyone will.

RETIRED LOS ANGELES pharmacist Michael

Washington joined the NBS to help others get into skiing. He found safety in numbers. Washington started skiing in 1969, at age 21, when his University of Southern California fraternity brothers invited him to Mammoth Mountain. He was the first Black member of the fraternity and had never skied before.

“They invited me to go with them as a joke, and I didn’t know that,” says Washington, who viewed the invitation as an adventure. “The guys could have signed me up for a lesson, but they took me cold turkey up to the top of the mountain and left me there. I could have been killed or broken a leg. I lost one ski over a cliff while they were laughing at me at the bottom of the hill. That’s like putting someone who had never driven a car into the Indy 500,” he recalls.

Washington made a goal to learn how to

ski and signed up for lessons with experts. He got good enough by his second year on the slopes to consider skiing professionally and soon joined the NBS.

“When I found out there were (dozens of other) Black skiers, I joined them,” Washington says. “They didn’t look at me like I was an anomaly. I was with people who were looking out for me.”

Black people expect mixed reactions when they pursue outdoor sports, including skiing. In the book, Black in White Space: The Enduring Impact of Color in Everyday Life, Yale professor Elijah Anderson documents the unique challenges facing Black people as they navigate “white spaces — a perceptual category, defined by the overwhelming presence of white people and the relative absence of Blacks — and their struggle to overcome stereotypes that continue to stigmatize them.”

The assumption of a natural Black space being a ghetto persists, despite the growth in a Black middle class. It explains the proliferation of videos on social media where white people question a Black person’s presence. Black people, Anderson adds, anticipate racial profiling and know that disproving imagined negative presumptions falls on them. Black ski clubs provide a buffer for these experiences.

Like Wright and Washington, Denver-based snowboarder Quincy Shannon gained confidence and a sense of belonging by attending NBS summits. “In a space as redlined as skiing and snowboarding still is, I’m very much conscious and aware that I am a Black skier,” he says, “not only because of how people treat me, which could be good or bad, but just by the identity in which you see others who look like you or the lack thereof.”

Shannon remembers being sponsored by Ikon Pass to record his experience at Aspen Snowmass for Black History Month. He posted a weekend spent with his daughter on the company’s social media, and it was met with racial animus.

“In the comments section, we had people saying, ‘I guess we should turn the snow black now, because this group wants to come up here, so that they’ll feel more comfortable,’” Shannon says. “We got over 300 comments, but I would say 70 of those were ignorant and very nasty.”

This is one reason he started Ski Noir 5280, a nonprofit that partners with companies and local governments to lend ski gear, offer free or discounted lift tickets, and even provide ground transportation to ski areas. More than 200 people signed up in the first two days of Ski Noir’s first trip this season, Shannon says. Based on demand for Ski Noir’s services, he believes Black ski clubs are still very much in demand.

Both Wright and Washington say they often go skiing by themselves and wouldn’t allow anyone to stop them. They don’t need Black ski clubs or the wooing of ski resorts, though it does help. But Shannon says the clubs are still relevant, not only as a shield against racism, but also because race isn’t their focus; skiing is. On the slopes members are just skiers, burning down a mountain, ignoring the arcs of white snow sprayed in their wake, as they look straight ahead. ✦

HEAR MORE about the National Brotherhood of Skiers on NPR

Code Depend

Save Red Rock keeps an eye on Clark County’s Development Code

BY Ryan Slattery

When Clark County last did a comprehensive review of its planning standards near Red Rock Canyon, it was 2003. Red Rock Casino Resort, Downtown Summerlin, and many of the neighborhoods in the foothills around there didn’t exist, let alone the homes that have crept up to the border of the conservation area itself.

Now, as the county reviews and rewrites its Master Plan and Development Code — an effort it’s named Transform Clark County — conservationists are remaining vigilant to ensure rural protections, wildlife corridors, and housing density remain the same.

“There is a need to update it, but certainly not to gut it,” says Pauline van Betten of Save Red Rock. “When a person comes to Red Rock, there is a different feeling (than in the city). You don’t have high-density urban development adjacent to the park. You have a buffer zone. We want to make sure that these things aren’t removed. We do know that people like to exploit beautiful areas because they’re beautiful. There needs to be absolute protections. When you buy land, you understand this is what the rules are.”

Since it launched in 2020, Transform Clark County has been a transparent process. The master plan was adopted in December 2021, but the county continues to solicit public input for the development code update.

“We received a lot of feedback, but nothing on the Red Rock Overlay because it didn’t really change,” says Nancy Amundsen, the county’s director of comprehensive planning. “The limitations on density in the Red Rock Overlay are still there. We are not changing that. We are just trying to create consistency in the (development)

code so that anybody who picks it up can understand what they can do with their piece of property.”

While restrictions on density, design standards, preservation of the viewshed, limits on commercial development, and other protections remain in the Red Rock Overlay, the issue of water conservation is being added. The county’s recent adoption of a rule prohibiting water features and pools larger than 600 square feet will apply.

“Such a short time ago, we were kind of oblivious that we were living in the desert,” van Betten says. “Water conservation wasn’t on the radar. Part of this process (of reviewing the county’s plan) is to see what else we might be missing. We want to be preparing for the future and writing a document that can stand the test of time.”

Pockets of private land exist throughout the overlay, and the Bureau of Land

Management owns property outside the conservation area that it could potentially dispose of in the future. If these areas were developed, coupled with high-density development continuing along the edge of the conservation area, it could diminish Red Rock’s rural feel, van Betten fears.

Two notable projects are at Bonnie Springs Ranch, where 16 luxury homes are being built on the 65-acre parcel, and atop Blue Diamond Hill, where gypsum mine owner and developer Jim Rhodes recently obtained a conditional use permit to build 429 homes on 671 acres in the first phase of the project that has been entangled in lawsuits and controversy for years.

For landowners, “the Master Plan provides a clear vision for making our community more livable and sustainable,” said Commissioner Justin Jones, whose district includes Red Rock, in a statement ✦

Thank you to everyone who attended Restaurant Awards at Scotch 80 Prime at Palms Casino Resort on November 30th. The awards ceremony showcased signatures of the Las Vegas culinary scene including Peppermill Restaurant & Fireside Lounge and lauded neighborhood locations including Trattoria Nakamura-Ya. The full course of winners is available now at www.desertcompanion.com.

Celena Haas, Kelley Tucky, Andrea Goeglein, Lora Picini

Owner & chef of Trattoria Nakamura-Ya, Kengo Nakamura, left; Kota Nakamura

Joseph Mikulich (Anima by EDO), Oscar Amador (Anima), and Roberto Liendo (Anima) Chef of the Year, Nicole Brisson

Executive Chef of Scotch 80 Prime – Marty Lopez

JUST “WHOO!” IT

FITNESS DOESN’T HAVE TO BE BORING. THESE CLASSES PROVE IT

BY Jen Avison Smith

If you find the gym’s squat rack more pain than the gain is worth, explore these 10 fitness forms that free you from conventional exercise with creative movement and a touch of adrenaline.

(Disclosure: The writer has taught classes at Sunnys Pole Fitness & Boutique, and Pole Fitness Studio.)

Nearly every woman has heard this sage advice at least once in her life: Never leave your drink unattended. Though some might mistake this concern as paranoia, the fear of being drugged is grounded in a sobering reality for tens of thousands of women each year: According to the World Population Review, almost 44 percent of American women will be victims of sexual assault at some point in their lives. Nevada holds the dubious distinction of having the fifth-highest rape rate in the nation, and the Nevada Department of Public Safety says the state’s police saw a 93 percent increase in reported rapes between 2010 and 2019.

“The stats are really intense,” says Joy Hoover, the founder of Esoes Cosmetics, a Las Vegas-based makeup brand dedicated to preventing sexual violence. Hoover says her awareness of sexual violence became acute after her father-in-law killed her mother-in-law in 2013. That, combined with

BEAUTY

Giving Lip

Cosmetic developer fights sexual violence with makeup

BY Anne Davis AND Yvette Fernandez

her experience working for a nonprofit that helps sex trafficking victims, convinced her something more needed to be done. “As a mom of two daughters who are six and nine years old, it’s not okay for me to raise them in the world the way it is,” Hoover says.

Her primary concern was preventing the

accidental ingestion of benzodiazepines, the most common class of drugs slipped into drinks. She and her husband embarked on a yearlong journey, resulting in Esoes Cosmetics’ smart Liquid Lipstick line, coming out in March. The lipstick, which comes in four colors bearing names such as It’s Not the Dress Nude and No Means No Red, contains two test strips that wearers that can pull out of the tube and use to see if their drink has been tampered with. Additionally, the lipstick tube features a Bluetooth-enabled button on its base that can be pushed to call 911, send a text message to a trusted contact, or make a loud noise — all customized via the Esoes app. Hoover says, “Most of us carry a cell phone and a lipstick on us, and I just thought: ‘What could a cell phone or a lipstick do? How could it help someone?’”

Elena Espinoza, interim director of advocacy for Signs of Hope, a local organization providing support to those affected by sexual violence, emphasizes that while defensive

products such as the Esoes lipstick can be good first steps to protect victims, they shouldn’t be seen as shifting responsibility for sexual violence away from perpetrators. “We just want people to be aware that that if there’s a new product, learn how to use it appropriately. And understand that if it malfunctions or it gets taken away by the perpetrator and used against you, it is never the victim’s fault,” Espinoza says.

HEAR MORE about Esoes Cosmetics founder Joy Hoover on on KNPR’s State of Nevada

While Hoover emphasizes that her product is not going to prevent all sexual assaults, she considers it to be an empowering tool for victims. “We want to make it easy for survivors to know what’s going on with them, to have consent and agency over their decisions, and to have help if and when they need it,” she says. ✦

BUNGEE Use your body weight to careen along the ground, pushing against the rigged harness stretching from the ceiling for the ultimate resistance training. Pole Kisses, Bungee & Aerial Fitness, polekissesaerialfitness.com; Aerial Athletica, aerialathletica.com

BURLESQUE This art form is full of tantalizing tricks and titillating moves. Bonus: A rich cultural history and opportunity for creative costume design. Burlesque Hall of Fame, burlesquehall. com; Pole Fitness Studio, polefitnessstudio.com

HIGH WIRE High wire is the circus endeavor that teaches precision and balance on a tightrope — great for stabilizing ankle and knee joint muscles and improving focus. Trapeze Las Vegas, trapezelasvegas.com

HULA HOOP An inner child reconnection regimen, with hip-shaking, torso-twisting,

LYRA Suspended hoops encourage dancers to create shapes and move in unexpected ways. Las Vegas Circus Center, lasvegascircuscenter.com; Shine Alternative Fitness, shinealternativefitness. com; Aerial Athletica, aerialathletica.com

POLE DANCE The original club cardio, pole dance comes in a variety of styles and class types, available at several fitness centers around the Valley. Sunnys, sunnysvegas.com; Pole Fitness Studio, polefitnessstudio.com; Deja Vu Presents Crash Academy, crashacademylv.com; Pole Kisses, polekissesaerialfitness.com

CHINESE POLE The artistry that inspired modern pole dancing, this version uses a thicker pole, encouraging brute strength. (It can also be done fully clothed.) Las Vegas Circus Center, lasvegascircuscenter.com

SILKS Aerial arts looks all billowing grace — as dancers wrap colorful fabrics around their bodies to twist and fall with style — but requires strength and coordination. Aerial Fitness, aerial-fitness.net; Craft Motions, vagaro.com/ us02/craftmotionsinc; Shine Alternative Fitness, shinealternativefitness.com

TRAPEZE Great for core-building, but not for the faint of heart, trapeze classes will teach you to swing you through the air with power and precision. Trapeze Las Vegas, trapezelasvegas.com

TWERK Like jumping into a music video, this is a lower-body workout that redefines “booty shaking.” Millennium Dance Complex, mdclv.com; Pole Fitness Studio, polefitnessstudio.com; Sunnys, sunnysvegas.com

PORTRAIT Mark Vogelzang

Child advocates are sounding the alarm about problems with Southern Nevada’s foster care system: Lack of funding, meager support from law enforcement, paltry pay for foster parents, and broad social stigma combine to create what Curtis Stuckey calls a tsunami of difficulties. Stuckey, who works for Eagle Quest, the state’s largest private foster care agency, is currently fostering six boys ages 10 to 17. He and his wife, Trina, estimate they’ve fostered hundreds of children with behavioral issues over the past decade. Stuckey sat down with Desert Companion to talk about what inspired him to start fostering, how he finds motivation to continue despite the challenges, and what can be done to fix Nevada’s broken system. (Note: These are his views, not those of Eagle Quest.)

You’ve been fostering kids on and off for 10 years. What made you want to start doing it?

I can’t think of anything more valuable than trying to make a difference and impact kids’ lives positively. Even though in a way in my heart, it’s pain, because I missed so much of my own kids’ childhood. So, it’s bittersweet. But it’s just what I felt like God put me here to do. I got my degree in criminal justice; I was going to be a probation officer. I did my internship, and I hated it. I fell into this as Plan B by accident. I’ve been good at it ever since.

You’ve cared for children with behavioral problems. How do you handle that?

I’m trying to teach (my foster kids) that you are normal kids with some issues who live in an alternative living arrangement right now. Trying to get that label of “foster kid” off you, because they might as well say “criminal” — that’s how society treats them … I want to be a preventer, educator, a role model — without saying anything.

It requires you to wear 1,000 different hats. You have to know what hat to wear when and be a selfless person. You’ve got to know (trouble) you’re receiving is not about you. And I get that. I’m just here. But when it’s quiet, I’m going to come, and I’m going to talk to you about how you treat me, because I don’t deserve that.

Having spent so many years both fostering and helping other people foster, what are some of the problems you’ve observed with the system?

You can’t pinpoint one thing. It’s not an apple; it’s more like an onion. It’s a lot of things that affect other things. I think the

‘Not a Number’

Foster parent Curtis Stuckey reflects on decades of sharing his home with kids who have nowhere else to go

BY Anne Davis

agency that I work for offers as much support as they can … Funding is an issue. Foster parenting should be a profession … I got a kid who just refused to go to school today, so I’m stuck here, because he won’t go, and I don’t trust what he’s going to do (at home alone) ... So, you have all those challenges for people who work that want to help, but you’re going to lose money, and possibly lose your job ...

I’ve had a lot of kids on probation, and the way it’s structured — I’m just going to say I don’t think it’s effective. Because we assign all these conditions to your probation: You must attend school, you can’t use drugs or alcohol, you need to follow the rules, or you need to do all the work in your program. (If) you’re doing none of these things, you stay here. These kids are going to gradually get worse and keep doing more. But it’s just not going to be them; they’re going to recruit others. So, one bad apple can ruin two or three or four more.

How would you start to address these problems?

There’s a lot of deterrence to make (a child) not want to do what needs to be fixed. We need better support from police and probation, we need more funding, you need the right people. And the right people have to be exposed to everything. Training can’t be sugarcoated.

(As a foster parent) you’re expected to be a superhero, but then when you fall short, you’re treated like a villain, when you may not have felt like you had everything you needed to be successful in the first place.

How has your community reacted to you fostering these kids?

The community, like our neighbors, they’re part of the problem also. And I’m not going to say it’s their fault, because they get exposed to a lot of profanity, a lot of horrible behavior, kids trying to smoke

Q&A

and fight and do horrible things. But they’re not educated either. These kids did not come from jail; they came from a shelter … These neighbors around me do not speak to me — none of them. Nobody says, “Good morning, how are you doing?” Nothing. And I get it, I understand it, but I don’t like it. Because I feel like that’s how the world treats us … Most people don’t want these kids around them.

Have you seen any changes in the kids you’ve fostered after opening your home to them?

You will see the change, but it’s minimal. You have to look hard for the positivity … We have our moments where everything’s good. Those are the days that reinforce what you’re doing … I know that they hear me, and I know I’m making a difference. But if I was so busy being upset, or disappointed, or frustrated, I would never see it. Every day we’re here together is a success, and some days that’s the best we’re going to get. That’s another day they didn’t leave in an ambulance or police car to go to the emergency room for injury or hospitalization or go back to Child Haven.

But experiences have taught me that I’m not going to see (the change) right now. I’m going to get a text, I’m going to get a call in five or ten years: “Man, thank you so much!”

What do you want people to know about fostering in Southern Nevada?

The biggest part is, these kids that’ve been here for so long … I’ve gotten kids that have been in Child Haven — little kids 9, 10, 11 — you would think on paper, they’d be the first ones to go. They should be. But some of them have been in 25, 30 placements already.

And the longer you’re in foster care, (the more) you’re going to learn things, you’re going to get exposed to things, and you’re going to be affected by it. Foster care is … supposed to be short term — three months, six months, maximum like a year … I’ve gotten kids that are 11, and they’ve been in the system since they were five.

I would like for more people to get involved and make a commitment to help these kids, because it’s the people that make the difference, at the end of the day … These kids are just not a number, they have value. ✦

HEAR MORE: Southern Nevada advocates speak on the topic of adoption and fostering on KNPR’s State of Nevada

Controlling the Current

Allegiant Electric’s Andrea Vigil uses the clout she accumulates to advocate for herself and others

BY Jana Marquez

In October, Las Vegas resident and Allegiant Electric Chief Operating Officer Andrea Vigil sat around a table with seven other small-business owners to talk about the needs of Latinx communities. But this was no ordinary roundtable — it was in a conference room at the White House. At the head of the table was Vice President Kamala Harris. The group had been invited in recognition of their small-business acumen; Vigil, for instance, was named Nevada’s 2022 Small Business Person of the Year by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA).

Though Vigil shared being a Latina and small-business owner with others at the table, she was the only Nevadan and electrical contractor. She took advantage of the opportunity to shed light on the lack of skilled labor and knowledge of resources that the state’s small and minority-owned businesses are facing. Vigil was operating according to her standard playbook. Accustomed to being the only something (woman, Latina, small-business owner) at most tables, she’s learned to get the lay of the land, cultivate expertise, and then use her credentials to take up space and lift others to success.

Vigil says that her husband Anthony’s background of 20 years’ electrical experience, paired with her background in the solar industry, led to their cofounding Allegiant Electric in 2015. What started with the couple and three employees has grown to a total of 18 employees who offer a wide range of services.

“During the pandemic, when other companies were shutting down, we hired another 11 people,” Vigil says. “So, we’ve continued to grow. Our services have really expanded. We’re not only doing solar, residential, or commercial work.”

Projects on the horizon for Allegiant Electric include the installation of electric vehicle charging stations for Tesla in

Primm and Mesquite, a partnership with Forté Specialty Contractors, and bidding on electrical for various subdivisions with Toll Brothers. For 2022, Vigil expected Allegiant Electric to bring in about $3 million in revenue.

How did they get there? It began with education. As a first-time business owner, Vigil felt it was important to learn as much as possible about the electrical industry in Nevada. She immersed herself in all the locally available resources she could find.

“I got involved in a lot of small-business programs,” she says, noting SBA’s Emerging Leaders and Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship initiatives, and UNLV Cox Cares program, as well as various state programs. She also participates in the National Association of Women in Construction. As she networked with industry veterans, they advised her to get as many certifications as possible. So,

GIRL POWER Andrea Vigil, COO of Allegiant Electric and winner of Nevada’s 2022 Small Business Person of the Year, uses her experience to lift up other women and minorities in business.

she did: “I got certified as a WBE, which is a Women Business Enterprise; SBE, a Small Business Enterprise; DBE is a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise. ...” The list goes on.

The couple also got woman-owned, emerging small business, local disadvantaged, and other statuses for their company, allowing it to tap into specially allocated funds and qualify for contracts that require specific accreditation.

Vigil serves as vice chair for WBECWest, the Women’s Business Enterprise Council in Nevada, because she wanted to be a voice for her peers and share her knowledge on how to grow with them.

Both her business success and professional service helped Vigil capture the SBA award, which recognized small-business leaders’ entrepreneurial development and community impact, particularly during the COVID pandemic. Allegiant demonstrated this by adding staff and service vehicles, meeting payroll, and increasing its job-bidding capacity to $1 million.

When awarding this distinction, the SBA looks for engagement with other small-businesses, the community, and participation in SBA assistance, says Nevada SBA District Director Saul Ramos.

“Our mission is to help businesses start, grow, and recover. We go back to educating them, through training or mentorship,” Ramos says. “At the end of the day, we want to position them to compete, succeed, and thrive. So, we’re always looking at ways in which we can help them improve efficiency or hedge these high interest rates in the long term.”

Vigil believes more small businesses should avail themselves of state resources, which helped Allegiant. “The SBA has been great,” she says. “They’ve championed me all the way, with any questions I’ve had, especially when COVID hit. When there was so much confusion with the Paycheck Protection Program, you couldn’t get a hold of anybody (nationally). But guess what?

I got a hold of our local people.”

Vigil is committed to using her platform to advocate for small businesses in the Hispanic community. “A lot of us, we’re cash-based,” she says. “We’re mattress money people, so we don’t necessarily go out and build a line of credit as small-business owners. So, how do you learn how to do that?”

She is also a woman, heightening the obstacles in her path — particularly in the

construction field, where fewer than 11 percent of jobs are occupied by women.

According to Vigil, general contractors have questioned her presence at job sites countless times.

“Fortunately for me, I have my husband and an amazing project manager, who back me up and say, ‘She’s the owner and an educated woman,’” Vigil says. “I know what we’re doing, and I’m knowledgeable and capable of the work that we’re out there doing.”

Such experiences have encouraged her to use her voice, something she encourages other women to do, too. “I don’t come to the table with an ego. I come willing to listen and ask for advice,” she says. “For the women in the construction industry, I think it’s so important for them to go out there and not be afraid. In any industry or field where it’s male-dominated.”

Mark Rogge, Allegiant Electric’s project manager, says his boss walks this talk. “She’s not afraid to go and put herself in front of people,” he says. “Some of these contractors, they’re the big boys. A challenge is, to get up the gumption.”

Vigil believes teamwork and collaboration not only set her apart in a male-dominated space but will also help solve the skilled labor shortage her industry is facing. Allegiant Electric fosters this approach by bringing in workers for on-the-job training opportunities and sharing knowledge of the trade in the community.

“I just really hope that we all share our knowledge, and we all learn from each other and continue to build each other up,” she says. “It would be better for us to all work together within our state.”

To give back to the community that’s supported them, Vigil and her husband partnered with groups such as HELP of Southern Nevada and donated services to their daughter’s school.

The next phase in Allegiant’s growth will come from an SBA loan. The couple hopes to buy a building to accommodate staff growth and help them respond to opportunities in solar, EV-charging stations, battery storage, lighting retrofits, and more.

Rogge, who’s been in the electrical industry in Las Vegas for 30-plus years, says, “There’s not much that we turn down. Andrea, God bless her, is aggressive as heck. And it’s a good thing, because that keeps everybody on their toes. The work is there. And she has got a knack for finding it.” ✦

A CELEBRATION OF SPAIN FROM CHEF JOSÉ ANDRÉS

It’s October 2020, and temperatures have taken the usual nosedive from “At least it’s a dry heat” to “It gets cold in the desert?” I’m driving to The Writer’s Block, where crates of books are lined up by the door waiting for their new owners. Three of those books are waiting for me. The sign on the door asks me to put on a mask before walking in, and I do. The independent bookstore, one of famously few here in Vegas, is the one place I can’t seem to give up in the early pandemic days. I’ve given up restaurants, art galleries, coffee shops, all types of shops really. A bookstore is my line in the sand.

I’ve visited The Writer’s Block many more times since October 2020. It’s a safe place, somewhere I fit in. Although now, I don’t blend in. I’m one of maybe two people still wearing a mask. For most, the pandemic appears to be over. I wonder sometimes what that would feel like. Leaving the house as I did before. Do you remember before? I think I do. I lived in a city that I enjoyed exploring. I knew that D E Thai Kitchen was the best bang for your buck downtown. I wrote about the rise of New Orleans Square and the opening of The Mayfair Supper Club. I loved Las Vegas, and it felt like the city loved me too.

These days, leaving the house involves running a series of mathematical equations in my head, factoring probabilities, calculating risk versus reward. I hate math, but I have no choice. I’m 38 years old, and the number of times I’ve visited a doctor’s office this year is higher than most folks my age do in five years. For decades my body has been home to multiple chronic illnesses. They seem to enjoy it as much as I enjoyed Vegas.

These conditions have made my life progressively harder. I start my morning with five different pills meant to dissuade my body from acting on various natural but harmful impulses. It doesn’t always work. I may experience sudden sharp aches that derail productivity. The stress of that often triggers other painful symptoms in a biological domino effect. I scrape my efforts together, sapping every ounce of energy to make it to the end of the day — when I can drag myself to bed, sob into my pillow, and pray for relief. I feel like I’m on a dinghy, doing my best to stay afloat. Using my arms, legs, fingers, and toes to stop water from pouring in through the cracks. Doing everything I can to keep from drowning. There are no limbs left to seal any more leaks.

Meanwhile, COVID hospitalized my father. It killed a friend’s spouse. It settled

The COVID Calculations

How weathering the pandemic has changed my social life and relationship with the city I love

BY Veronica Klash

into another friend and refuses to leave. The full extent and effects of long COVID are unknown. Doctors can’t predict who it will affect, and according to the recent federal Household Pulse Survey, it’s afflicting almost 1 in 5 adults who have had COVID. I know what it means to have everyday life disrupted by severe fatigue. To live with pain that lasts for years. Pain that is so alive you think it could go on without you. There’s no one I would wish that on.

So, I surprise even myself when I agree to meet friends for tea. It’s the beginning of 2022, and I can’t remember the last time I dined indoors. I’m recently boosted

and highly optimistic. In addition to high tea, Coffee Religion has high ceilings and a large Buddha. The space is open and feels well ventilated. The server brings warm biscuits and soft, salty butter. She brings finger sandwiches, tiny toasts, and tarts lined up on tiers inside a golden cage. My friends and I talk. We laugh. We cry. I pour generous pools of cream into several cups of fragrant Earl Grey. Afterward, I waft home, buoyed by a balanced cocktail of good food, good service, good atmosphere, and good company. For an hour and a half, I put my fears aside. Then they return. I know this is not a pleasure I can regularly repeat. After

all, I’m playing a numbers game, and the more often I take the risk, the more likely I am to regret it.

Those who have gone back to life as usual have done so while dismissing the phantom of chronic illness as if brushing biscuit crumbs off a table. That is a privilege that 65 percent of people are taking advantage of, according to the Axios-Ipsos Coronavirus Index. But the remaining 35 percent of us have had to find other ways to cope.

In the second half of 2021, I had begun my calculations in earnest. I realized there were occasions or locations that were nourishing enough to play the game of COVID roulette. Worthy of risking another crack in my dinghy. Fergusons Downtown, with its eclectic shops, quiet ease, and cascades of bougainvillea, was already a favorite of mine before the pandemic. It’s a type of locale Vegas needs more of — an outdoor public space with plenty of greenery, shade, seating, and no cars in sight. I added it to the rotation with The Writer’s Block.

None of my loved ones bristled at my preferences. They understood outdoor meals as the price of my attendance. They put on layers while braving the cold on Jjanga’s patio in Rhodes Ranch. They shooed flies away while we discussed the latest Twitter discourse at the tables outside Casa Don Juan Downtown. They wiped drizzle from the table while taking a bite of empanada at Makers & Finders in Summerlin. They put on sunglasses and chugged equal amounts of sangria and water on Firefly’s patio on Buffalo. For many, the pandemic has been both socially and financially isolating. I’m lucky that has not been the case for me.

The truth is that when it comes to COVID decisions, we’ve all done the math for ourselves, whether we realize it or not. We’ve allowed certain numbers to be acceptable, expendable. The nationwide seven-day average for deaths at press time is 390. It’s a difficult sum to fathom. An estimated 1,517 people died when the Titanic sank. We’re currently outpacing that number every month. Each one of those 390 represents someone who won’t wake up for breakfast. Someone who didn’t kiss a loved one at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Someone who will be missed.

There may be a day when I cross the threshold, when calculating my plans is no longer tenable. Until then, I will continue to do the small things I can to limit my risk and the risk of others who are more vulnerable. I still love this city. But I think it understands, I can’t love it in the same way as before. ✦

Aw, Shucks

Fresh oysters on demand in the desert? Atavia Jackson makes it happen

BY Sarah Bun

Las Vegas is in the Mojave Desert. What water we do have (Lake Mead) is shrinking. It doesn’t exactly seem synonymous with fresh seafood. And yet, Le Cordon Bleutrained chef Atavia Jackson is seeking to prove it can be, through her interactive pop-up experience Shucking Awesome Traveling Oyster and Raw Bar. With 17 events under her belt in 2022, she might be onto something.

Jackson’s penchant for oysters began in Asheville, North Carolina, in 2011. Still in her early 20s, she was the private chef for a businessman who’d flown her there to cater his 80-person family reunion. During the trip, she had her first oyster: a Carolina Gold. Recalling today what it felt like to slurp down the cold mollusk with cocktail sauce, Jackson mimes an “I’m in heaven” look.

A few years after returning to Las Vegas from the reunion, Jackson honed her oyster skills at Bouchon by Thomas Keller. She also worked at Echo & Rig’s oyster bar and butchery, where she met executive chef Aram Bakalian of Lolik Catering, a regular client.

Jackson started developing the Shucking Awesome concept in March 2020. Being laid off from CVS, where she was working during a break from the culinary world, spurred her to act on the idea. She wanted to do something outside the box, she says, and she’s a seafood girl at heart.

While the pandemic significantly affected women of color, many still find entrepreneurship to be the most “viable path,” according to a 2021 survey conducted by Gusto and the National Association of Women Business Owners.

Jackson knew she wanted to own her own business — just not a brick-and-mortar. The unpredictability of the pandemic

taught her to be humble and to make calculated moves. “It made me think about every step I was going to make,” she says. “I didn’t want to fall victim to what everybody else was going through.”

Jackson also wanted to be mobile, able to bring her business wherever she went — and the low overhead was attractive. On September 21, 2021, she got her business license. But there was one thing still on her mind as she launched her first event, a collaboration with CraftHaus Brewery in March 2022: How receptive would people be to the concept?

Very, it turned out. The idea was “kind of COVID-proof,” Jackson says, because businesses where people could get oysters were closed. With her services, they could enjoy the delicacy in their backyard.

Jackson’s wife, LaTisha Springs, wondered why she had chosen such a niche market. “My other half didn’t understand where I was coming from with it,” she says. “And then once things started picking up, she was like, ‘Wow, people really love oysters.’”

Jackson’s second event was at Dawson’s Homecoming Food & Wine Festival. There, she catered alongside La Strega and Harlo Steakhouse & Bar chef and partner Gina Marinelli, Wolfgang Puck Players Locker, and Bodega Bagel, among others — a remarkable achievement for a tiny new catering company.

Lolik Catering’s Bakalian has known Jackson for more than a decade now and watched her progress. “What she’s doing is not an easy task, to start a food business after COVID, but Atavia has the technique to back it,” Bakalian says. “Anyone can cook, but if you don’t have the technique, the execution suffers.”

In addition to its full-service raw bar, Shucking Awesome has expanded to include oyster shucker and cart service, which work well in small-scale gatherings. Clients can choose from Fanny Bay, Bruce’s Beach House, Pacific, Kumiai, and Kumamoto oysters, or special order others, provided they’re in season. Jackson gets her oysters from local distributors, tapping her network of bicoastal connections to arrange for delivery right before use and ensure her product is fresh.

She says people do often ask about eating oysters in Las Vegas, and her reply is always the same: “Just because we live in the desert, that doesn’t mean we can’t have fresh seafood.” ✦

Truffle Fried Chicken

At Boom Bang Fine Food & Cocktails

BY Jason Harris

As your plate arrives, you wonder, “Am I being pranked? Am I suddenly competing in a food challenge I didn’t know I signed up for?” Yes, you’ve eaten fried chicken many times — who hasn’t? — but never like this. The daily specials at Boom Bang are all notable, but Wednesday is something next level; it’s Truffle Fried Chicken night.

Upon first look, it’s as if chef Elia Aboumrad zapped the fowl with the machine from the movie, Honey, I Blew Up the Kid On your plate is a half-chicken with an armor of skin worthy of a conquering Viking king. Brined for two days in truffle juice, truffle oil, buttermilk, and lemon, the bird underneath the crunchy pillow of skin is delightfully moist, the thick covering having allowed the protein to cook in its own juices.

Served with two biscuits, roasted vegetables, and hot herbed honey-butter, it’s a plate that any Southerner — or Nordic warrior — would be proud of.

Boom Bang Fine Food & Cocktails, 75 S. Valle Verde, #160, Henderson, Boombang. restaurant

ASTONISHING. UNPREDICTABLE. MIND-BENDING.

Omega Mart is an immersive interactive experience from the groundbreaking art collective, Meow Wolf. Featuring jaw-dropping work from international and local artists, Omega Mart sends participants of all ages on a journey through surreal worlds and immersive storytelling. Discover secret portals or simply soak up the innovative art as you venture beyond an extraordinary supermarket into parts unknown.

Tickets at OmegaMart.com

CULTURE

Race  ROCK ‘N’ ROLL LAS VEGAS

FEB. 25-26

Only Vegas would cross a competitive running event with an all-night party, giving birth to the Rock ‘n’ Roll running series. The night-running party includes half-marathon, 5K, and 10K courses through the entire (shut down) Las Vegas Strip and Downtown. Runners get to experience on-course entertainment, with live bands and DJs packing the streets, playing hits from all genres to make contestants forget the distance under the neon lights. The finish line is just the beginning of the festivities, as runners and guests are invited to enjoy postrace parties at some of the city’s hottest nightlife spots, where they’re free to come as they are — medal, running shoes, and all. (Jana Marquez)

4:30p, $89-159, Las Vegas Strip and Fremont Street Downtown Las Vegas, runrocknroll.com

KODO ONE EARTH TOUR: TSUZUMI

FEB. 8

It’s been a rough three years for Nippon cultural enthusiasts, who’ve been unable to visit many local Japanese businesses because of closures and lockdown — not to mention Japan itself, whose travel restrictions barred most tourists. Those ready to reconnect with the Land of the Rising Sun can do so at Kodo’s One Earth Tour. Commemorating the group’s 42-year history, the performance traces Kodo’s percussive history through fan favorites such as "O-daiko," "Yatai-bayashi," and "Dyu-Ha" — the first time the latter has been performed on tour for a decade (Anne Davis) 7:30p, $29-99, Reynolds Hall in the Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

CHALK IT UP! ART & MUSIC FESTIVAL

At the Chalk it Up! festival, the bare cement is an open canvas, and the public, a collective Rembrandt. Over the course of the event, the sidewalk turns into one big chalk art painting. Let your little ones (or inner child) color outside the lines at the Kids Chalk Zone; unleash your creativity at the craft corner. If you’re not into chalk art, there are also face painting, balloon art, and other family activities. And all this frivolity will be accompanied by the Young Artists Orchestra of Las Vegas and the Kaminari Taiko Drummers. (Lourdes Trimidal) 10a-2p, free, Summerlin Library, 702507-3863, lvccld.bibliocommons.com/events

OPERA LEGENDS IN BLACK

FEB. 5

Opera Las Vegas helps Southern Nevadans celebrate Black History Month in a new way this year: by commemorating the oft-forgotten Black pioneers of opera.

The curated songbook features African American greats, including Marian Anderson, Shirley Verrett, Martina Arroyo, and George Shirley. With a come-as-you-are dress code and no entry fee, the event aims to break down access barriers that prevent today’s generations from connecting with the opera heroes of the past. (AD) 3p, free, Windmill Library Theatre, operalasvegas.com

Music  VIVALASVINYL RECORDLISTENING

FEB. 2

Those looking to show off their killer record collection or discover some new gems in the lending library can share their love of vinyl with others at this monthly club. Visitors can bring headphones for listening on the provided turntables and get their records cleaned by the library’s ultrasonic cleaner. This event is 18 and up only. (JM), 6p, free, Sahara West Library, lvccld.bibliocommons.com/events

Lecture  MISS BLUEBELL: EXPLORING THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF MARGARET KELLY

MARCH 5

This is the second installment in the three-event series, C’est Magnifique, commemorating the 65th anniversary of the Stardust Casino’s Lido de Paris cabaret show opening in Las Vegas. This event’s theme is Miss Bluebell herself (aka Margaret Kelly), a talented dancer and performer with enough je ne sais quois to find fame in Sin City during

its golden days. Learn about her life, work, and enduring impact on Vegas entertainment from a panel of speakers, including Kelly’s family and colleagues. UNLV’s Entertainment History Collections Curator Su Kim Chung will moderate the discussion. (AD) 2-4p, free, Clark County Library Main Theater, lvccld.org

FOOD FESTIVAL FOODIELAND NIGHT MARKET

MARCH 24-26 AND MARCH 31-APR. 2  With the return of warm weather, hipsters emerge from their caves in search of ube muffins and butter boards. They stumble into North Las Vegas and find … FoodieLand’s Night Market! Inspired by its famed counterparts in Asia, the festival brings together more than 170 multicultural food vendors from around America and the world. Besides unique dishes, attendees can enjoy alcoholic beverages, listen to live music, and shop at one of the featured artisanal booths. The best part?

FoodieLand is touring the Southwest U.S. this year, and Las Vegas is its first stop. (AD) Friday 3-11p, Saturday 1-11p, Sunday 1-10p, $3-5, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, foodielandnm.com

Concert  LOVE AFFAIR

FEB. 4

Fans of Valentine’s Day (We see you!) can bond with their increasingly scarce brethren at the Love Affair concert. The lineup is a nostalgic who’s-who of R&B artists, including headliner The Isley Brothers, Blackstreet, All4-One, Color Me Badd, The Jets, Deniece Williams, and Atlantic Starr. Take that, candy heart haters! (JM) 7p, $49.50, The Orleans Arena, orleansarena

Concert

LOVE, STORM

MARCH 10-11

If you want to thank Storm Large for finally elucidating the lyrics to A-ha’s “Take On Me,” during her performance of the song on America’s Got Talent in 2021, then buy a ticket to one of her two Las Vegas shows. Singing with her band Le Bonheur, Large conceived the concert as a love letter to her fans. She got her start in San Francisco clubs in the ’90s and eventually moved to Portland, Oregon, which revived her singing career. She’s since taken the nightly concert and cabaret scene by storm, touring with the band Pink Martini and performing with the Detroit Symphony at Carnegie Hall. (LT) 7p, $39-59, The Smith Center, thesmithcenter.com

DANCE

DYNAMIC GARDENS

FEB. 24-25

I’m a die-hard winter fan — gimme all the snow, frosty mornings, and short days. I get a little bummed that hygge-filled evenings are over when warm weather rolls around. But even a spring scrooge like me can appreciate the beauty of the new season as interpreted through dance. UNLV Dance’s Dynamic Gardens recital starts the season off with a bang (or rather, a bloom), spotlighting the work of both UNLV faculty members and other artists, including the acclaimed 20th-century choreographer Erick Hawkins. (AD) 2:30 and 7:30p, $18, UNLV’s Judy Bayley Theatre, 702-895-2787

YOUCAN’TTAKEIT WITHYOU

MARCH 3-19

Romeo and Juliet. The Hatfield and McCoys. But … funny? In this classic play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, audience members watch Tony Kirby, the successful boy from the pretentious

Festival  ST. PATRICK’S DAY FESTIVAL & PARADE

MARCH 10-12

Get your green on for the  annual St. Patrick’s Day Festival & Parade. Now in its 55th year, the three-day event is planned with families in mind, featuring games, food, Irish whiskey tastings, a car show, and authentic Celtic entertainment. If none of that transports you to the emerald fields of Ireland, then the headlining performance by Danú — a traditional Irish ensemble of flute, tin whistle, fiddle, button accordion, bouzouki, and vocals — should do the trick. (JM), free to attend (some activities require purchased wristbands), Water Street Plaza, cityofhenderson. com/residents

family, fall in love with Alice Sycamore, the pragmatic girl with more eccentric kin. When the two families have to come together for dinner one night, they’re forced to confront their own prejudices and decide whether they want to focus on their differences or their (surprising) commonalities. I’ll be the one in the front row alternating between crying-laughing and crying-crying. (AD) 2 and 8p, $30, Las Vegas Little Theatre, lvlt.org

BLACK HISTORY MONTH FESTIVAL

FEB. 18

Themed “Black Resistance” this year, the Black History Month Festival at Springs Reserve recognizes the history of African Americans in Southern Nevada. As with most Springs Preserve events, programming caters to all ages. Families can celebrate Black culture through educational exhibits, live music, dance performances, arts and crafts, and authentic cuisine. (JM) 10a-4p, $4-9.95, Springs Preserve, springspreserve.org/events

THEATRE

Suppose they opened a $120 million spectacle, and no one came? It’s a fair, if exaggerated, question: If Las Vegas is all about music stars and sports these days, what is the fate of the year-round show with wide appeal that defined the Cirque du Soleil era? There’s no disputing entertainment on the Strip has realigned around big names such as Adele. And every show now competes for attention and hotel guests with pro football, hockey, basketball, and other teams.

Small wonder we haven’t seen much in the way of new shows built on variety or acrobatics when Carrie Underwood has sold out 18 times at Resorts World. Cirque downsized its ambitions to open the relatively modest Mad Apple last summer. But Amystika — a companion show to Criss Angel’s regular one at Planet Hollywood — closed before most people could look up the meaning of the title they’d seen all over billboards and

Shown Up

Is the evolution of Vegas entertainment leaving big productions behind?

BY Mike Weatherford

cabs. Bat Out of Hell, the jukebox musical based on the hits of the late rocker Meat Loaf, was even more extensively advertised. But it lasted only three months at Paris Las Vegas before closing on New Year’s Day. Nonetheless, “Vegas without new production shows isn’t Vegas,” says Baz Halpin, producer and director of Awakening, the grandest of four recent entries which tested the new marketplace. “There hasn’t really

been a new permanent resident spectacle show. I thought it was really the time to bring those back.”

The $120 million production opened in November to replace Le Rêve in the circular theater at Wynn Las Vegas. The Wynnbacked budget would be closer to $187 million in adjusted dollars for 2004, when Cirque opened its like-minded, $165 million epic KÀ.

Awakening updates what’s possible in live

AWAKENING, the grandest of the new shows testing a crowded market

COURTESY WYNN LAS VEGAS

performance: A “floating” hydraulic stage in interlocking pieces. State-of-the-art video projections. Colossal puppets (by Michael Curry, the Lion King guy). Personal stereo speakers in every seat. Pretty big deal, right?

But there was, let’s just say, no problem getting tickets in the early weeks.

Could be people don’t want to gamble on an unknown entity when they still have six dependable Cirque hits and three from Spiegelworld to choose from.

Lower-stakes alternatives tried to offer audiences something different altogether but haven’t fared much better. Freestyle Love Supreme was a fun hip-hop update of improv comedy that closed early. And the first several weeks didn’t inspire optimism for two cabaret shows sharing cast members as well as a theatrical slant: A Musical About Star Wars and Newsical the Musical. But content may be less of an issue now than visitor priorities.

Awakening opened in time for what once was a slow month on the Strip, December, propped up by the National Finals Rodeo. But that month also saw two Las Vegas Raiders and eight Vegas Golden Knights games. Rooms at the Excalibur went for $499 the first weekend.

And look at the period of March 3-12, which brings both NASCAR and the Pac-12 Men’s Basketball Tournament. Even if you don’t count Adele — whose tickets are for one-percenters and/or like winning the lottery to score a pair — it’s easy to add up more than 100,000 headliner tickets for sale in that stretch:

• Katy Perry (2 shows with 5,000 seats = 10,000)

• David Blaine (2 x 3,500 = 7,000)

• Keith Urban (5 x 5,000 = 25,000)

• Usher (he’s going full Wayne Newton with two-show nights — 10 x 5,200 = 52,000)

That’s 94,000 tickets on the market. To keep going, just add two Jimmy Buffett arena shows, five nights of classic rockers Chicago, three nights of jam-band Widespread Panic, and so on.

You can forgive producers of the yearround shows if they didn’t jump for joy when industry trade bible Pollstar named Allegiant Stadium the nation’s top concert-sale venue. They may be the only people happy about how hard it is to score a Taylor Swift ticket for March 24-25.

AWAKENING’S HALPIN IS in a unique place to see the challenge from both sides: He

also produced Katy Perry’s Play at Resorts World. Yes, he will literally be competing with himself when Perry returns March 3-4.

“I think it’s indicative of how increasingly successful Las Vegas is as a tourist destination. It seems the appetite for Las Vegas has increased exponentially,” he says. And “all of this is only good,” he believes, in growing the larger market.

“If you’re a Katy Perry fan and she’s playing in town, you’re probably going to go see Katy Perry (once),” he adds. “But people like variety in their entertainment. They like to see something that can only be seen in Las Vegas, and I think that’s where Awakening sits.”

That theory might be reinforced by the early closure of a what seemed like a smartly positioned alternative, Freestyle Love Supreme, at the Venetian. Far from spectacle, the New York import relied on audience interaction. And it kept ambitions modest by booking a limited run from November through April. “We want to be there for as long as possible, but we need to test the market,” co-creator Anthony Veneziale said in the more optimistic days of December. But Freestyle fell short of even that mark, closing at the end of January.

While their shows had little in common, both Veneziale and Halpin were encouraged by the growing base of potential customers. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority calculates 4,758 new rooms coming onto the market this year, pushing the total room count past 156,000.

“There are 7,000 rooms at the Venetian … We just need five percent of the (people in those) rooms to say, ‘Hey, we’ll try this out,’” Veneziale figured in December. He also noted the “staggeringly high percentage of day-of sales” — maybe as much as 80 percent — for those visitors who still wait to decide what to see once they arrive in town.

If that logic seems misguided in hindsight, then why? It may come down to the age-old challenge of show business: Figuring out just what people do want to see — and now, how much time and money they have to see it. Veneziale believed post-pandemic audiences were looking for “a sense of belonging, a sense of community” rather than spectacle. He may have been right about that, but wrong about where to find it. Perhaps that community is found hoisting drinks with fellow fans of Usher or Luke Bryan.

Or maybe it's found in a hearing a story. Awakening and Bat Out of Hell coincidentally explored a shift from Cirque-type acrobatics to actual narrative. “I think (audiences) are more sophisticated,” Halpin says. “I think they want more from their entertainment, and I think that’s great for everybody in Las Vegas.”

Exploring new directions beyond Cirquestyle acrobatics is promising and arguably way overdue, but tricky in its own right. Bat Out of Hell was not much of a test case. Severely trimmed from the British original, it was barely coherent and full of astonishingly bad dialogue. And the rollout version of Awakening often seemed like a production design still in search of a show. Early feedback suggested “people want a little more story if anything,” Halpin says of his “myth-based” saga, narrated by a recorded Anthony Hopkins. He adds that it’s still a work-in-progress, seeking to balance technology with “those more intimate human moments.”

Perhaps the answer to the big names is to think even smaller. Be that extra thing to do on a visit. Even punch up — make fun of the Adele show.

Producers Tom and Michael D’Angora went so small, they paired up two micro-budget shows with shared cast members in the V Theater at Planet Hollywood. A Musical About Star Wars brought a trio of comic actors analyzing the cultural impact of the movie phenomenon with a noticeably unauthorized prop closet — very careful not to violate copyrights are they. The result has a few fun song parodies, but, in lieu of actual punchlines, a whole lot more of what one character calls “fan-splaining”: lectures that border on a TED Talk.

Newsical The Musical is a better New York transplant, looking to see if it can lure any of its following to a 6 p.m. time slot. A versatile quartet fuses sketch comedy and musical cabaret to spoof Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, Kim Kardashian and, yes, Adele. It’s a promising unclaimed niche for the Strip, but still a long shot even without the presentational issues that made this version seem even cheaper than it is. (Both shows were recast in January after their December opening.)

Just because  Freestyle Love Supreme didn’t work out, it shouldn’t mean that limited engagements should be written off as a failed idea. Broadway’s  SIX The Musical, a poppy take on Henry VIII’s wives, is booked for a limited run in a different Venetian theater March 21-May 7. It also played a week at The Smith Center last fall, so its return will test whether the Strip and the arts center can share a Broadway hit.

But the pressure’s on. Just east of the Venetian is a hard-to-miss new landmark: the MSG Sphere. Inside that giant 366-foot orb is— would ya believe it? — another concert venue. It’s scheduled to open with U2 in November. And those guys also know a thing or two about spectacle. ✦

Elliott Puckett

This RuPaul’s Drag Race veteran has an eclectic style all their own

BY Kelly Stith

Elliott Puckett, or “Elliott with 2 T’s,” is known for making a splash on Season 13 of RuPaul’s Drag Race , which won both a Critics Choice and an MTV award for best reality cast. Now a resident performer in drag brunches at local Arts District venue The Garden, Puckett is making waves in the Las Vegas community with their bold personality and vibrant looks. Gathering inspiration from sources such as Barbie and ’80s fashion, they create unforgettable ensembles that are like no one else’s.

My style influences ...

I was born in the ’90s, but I have a real love and appreciation for the ’80s. I think the ’80s were just so tacky and fabulous. The shoulder pads and lapels and everything was big and baggy, but also tight and fitted. There were so many clashes and different fabrics and patterns, and everything was bright and shiny and crazy

Personal style ...

It’s like a housewife, if she was a real estate agent who also was a stripper.

Drag tip for the masses ...

I think for women and people who present as women during the day, there’s a lot of fear when it comes to being bold with makeup and hair color and fashion. So, if you want to do a bold lip, do a bold lip. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, but at least try it. I’ve always tried different makeup trends, and a lot of times it didn’t work, but every once in a while, something would work, and you don’t know unless you actually try.

DIY

style hacks anyone could try ...

A hot glue gun and a prayer. I spent years on my own things just trying to figure it out. The easiest way to figure out how to sew something or to make something is to flip it inside out and copy it. But I think just

putting glue down on something and adding rhinestones to it or flowers or feathers, anything like that, you can take something from really simple to really dragging it up and making it an exceptional, unique item.

Go-to style product ...

Setting spray and a really good primer. I performed at the pool at one of the resorts in the middle of the day, in the middle of the summer, and I was out the whole day, came home at night and my face looked exactly the same as it did when I left the house.

Off-stage style ...

I love a good H&M shirt and a good pair of jeans and a nice white pair of high tops. I like a simple outfit, but then a really nice,

loud jacket. I love being able to do a simple jacket with a fun shirt, or a simple jacket with fun pants. I love being able to make one piece a standout and then kind of simplify around it so it’s not overwhelming, but you still get to have fun with your look.

Everyday fashion wisdom ...

For a lot of drag queens, drag is considered like a superhero cape. It gives them the freedom to do things they themselves would not normally do, the freedom to say things that they wouldn’t normally say. And it gives them the bravery to leave the house with an exceptional look and big hair and high heels and take on the world. And so, I think drag can inspire people to be unapologetic and brave. ✦

Refuge on Fire

Where do we turn when disaster destroys places that were supposed to be sanctuaries?

BY Meg Bernhard

The fire started on a blazing, windy day. Lightning struck wilderness, and the desert erupted. “There’s no way you can stop a fire like that,” Mike Gauthier, Mojave National Preserve superintendent, says. The day after the fire started was his first on the job, August 16, 2020. He’d seen plenty of wildfires in his 35 years in the Park Service, but never anything like this. It was like a dragon breathing flames across the Mojave. Hot. Fast.

Firefighters ordered aircraft and additional crew from the state. Gauthier ordered retardant drops from the county, state, and federal government. Their requests were put on hold. Another lightning storm had struck in northern California, resulting in the August Complex Fire, which would become the largest recorded wildfire in state history. With so much of California burning simultaneously, most fire-fighting resources were diverted to cities and towns along the northern coast, where human life was at risk. Cima Dome, the gently sloping granite mound near the Nevada border where Gauthier’s fire started, was home to blackbrush and creosote and Joshua trees, but very few humans.

Before the Dome Fire was contained, more than 43,000 acres and a million Joshua trees burned.

ON A COLD Saturday morning in March 2022, I visited the scorched woodland with a friend. We pulled onto a dirt road leading to an old cattle ranch, our destination. Miles off the interstate, I began to see the mark of the fire. The twisting, contorted Joshua trees were ashy white and black, as though made of newspaper, and the soil beneath them was, in some places, singed. The spectral forest extended as far as I could see, thousands of plants sapped of color. We parked next to a Subaru covered in national

parks stickers and walked into the foyer of a creaky building, where a crowd of people bundled in thick jackets and beanies huddled against the cold and listened to Andrew Kaiser, a Mojave National Preserve botanist, yell over the wind. We were there to plant young Joshua trees, a National Park Service restoration project.

After the orientation, we grabbed gloves, a shovel, chicken wire, and two buckets, each containing six small Joshua trees wrapped in a waxy plastic covering. With a National Park botanist named Gabe, my friend and I hiked a mile though a wash. Trudging over rocks and sand, Gabe proffered tidbits about desert ecology. When Joshua trees freeze during cold winters, he told us, the damage stimulates flowering, and, in turn, more growth. Because the tree’s seeds are so large and difficult to disperse, the Shasta ground sloth was once, thousands of years ago, the tree’s primary means of reproduction.

We arrived at our patch of woodland. I took a shovel, the wind howling as blade hit rock. Gingerly, I lowered a tiny Joshua tree into the hole I’d dug, its dangling red roots brushing the soft soil. Kneeling, the three of us nudged dirt onto its roots,

covering the plant until only its spiky fronds remained exposed.

The Park Service doesn’t usually intervene in natural events, but Kaiser argued that the fire wasn’t totally natural. Invasive grasses brought in by generations of cattle grazing proliferated in the soil, creating kindling. The hot temperatures and drought conditions in 2020 made for a more destructive fire, one powerful enough to create its own weather: Temperatures during the burn reached 115 degrees, compared to the area’s normal 90, and high wind created fire swirls known as firenados. Perennial plants aren’t adapted to drought and extreme heat, Kaiser said, and the preserve lost many such species. “One in particular never comes back,” he said: blackbrush. Joshua trees are often found growing next to the spindly shrubs because animals are repelled by their tannic and oily stems and leaves. One form of protection, gone.

All ecosystems have wildfires, but in the Mojave, hundreds of years could pass between major fires. The fire at Cima Dome was the second in 15.

Joshua trees are keystone species, essential to maintaining the delicate equilibrium of their ecosystems. They provide long-term

nesting for wrens and hunting perches for American Kestrels. Desert night lizards shelter around the trunk’s base, and yucca moths lay their eggs deep in the tree’s waxy, cream-colored flowers. There are two species of Joshua trees, the eastern and the western. The western, found primarily in Joshua Tree National Park, faces near total decimation from heat and drought. The future of the eastern had hinged on the very part of the Mojave National Preserve that burned, because Cima Dome was relatively high in elevation and cool in temperature, identified to serve as a “climate refugium” when other sites became untenable. Cima Dome was supposed to be a place where Joshua trees would survive.

IT IS STRANGE to know a place only in death, like conjuring a stranger from their grieving loved ones’ memories. Gauthier told me that the place was whimsical before the fire. Kaiser told me of the 10,000-year-old blackbrush stands that were lost. Chris Clarke, who works with the National Parks Conservation Association, wrote an obituary to the place, describing how he used to get lost in the dense Joshua trees, how

Cima Dome was “home to me longer than any built house.”

I’ve only known the ghostly trees, the charred soil. I didn’t get the chance to see Cima Dome before it burned. This is one story of being young. People my age have grown up hearing stories from our parents about the worlds of their childhoods, bountiful marshlands and majestic redwood forests and lush desert, worlds we can never experience because they’re already gone.

A MONTH AND a half after planting Joshua trees, I drove around Lake Mead, its infamous bathtub ring alarmingly visible, the low water a glistening blue. Every time I visit Lake Mead, I joke that I’m looking at the face of the Western water crisis. It’s not a very funny joke. I’ve spent most of my life depending on water from the Colorado River. My parents depend on it, too, and lately they’ve talked about getting out of Southern California, going somewhere cooler and wetter, at least for the hot months. These discussions make me wonder if I’ll ever be able to live in the place where I grew up.

I was at Lake Mead to visit the Song Dog Native Plant Nursery, where government botanists and volunteers nurtured thousands of plants from seed. Kelly Wallace, the nursery manager, was wearing a bucket hat and sunglasses as she worked outside the greenhouse, fixing a leaky irrigation system. When she saw me, she led me to an uncovered area where dozens of plastic containers holding slender green spikes sat in the midday sun. Young Joshua trees. The nursery had directly planted them in containers outdoors, because they needed to grow accustomed to harsh desert conditions, Wallace said.

As we walked through the greenhouses and office buildings, she pointed out various other projects and experiments. Outside the office sat a pile of soil made specifically for desert plants: a mixture of sand, cinder, and perlite good for water drainage. In one jam jar, Arizona Grape seeds were marinating in orange juice and a plant growth solution. Animals that eat the seed have low stomach pH, which allows the seed to germinate; the orange juice mixture was an attempt to mimic that chemistry, Wallace said. I asked about a green and pink succulent sitting in a corner. It was a Dudleya, Wallace told me, poached from the desert. The nursery was holding it as evidence in an ongoing restitution case.

We walked to the seed bank, a refrigerated room with countless jars stacked on shelves and countertops. In 2019, before the Dome

Fire, Kaiser collected Joshua tree seeds from the Mojave National Preserve for a separate project, and now the nursery was using those seeds to grow 3,000 Joshua trees for post-fire restoration. Wallace pulled out a brown paper bag holding the seeds. They were the size of dimes, flat, and black, like unpolished obsidian. I turned over a few in my hand and considered how long it would take for them to grow from swatches of black to the tall, gangly figures dotting the eastern Mojave.

UNTIL RECENTLY, I didn’t have much personal history with Joshua trees or their habitats. Although I grew up just ninety minutes southwest, I first visited Joshua Tree National Park, with my family, in May 2020, a few months before the Dome Fire would burn 100 miles northeast. We woke up before sunrise and drove, skirting the base of the San Jacinto Mountains until the scraggly silhouettes emerged on the horizon. Gone was my familiar landscape of buckwheat and chaparral, replaced by cholla and creosote, plants for which I didn’t yet have names. We parked on the side of the road, so early in the morning that we were alone in the park. Leaning against the car watching the sky morph from black to purple to pink, I asked my mother why we’d never spent much time in the Mojave. “I never thought about it,” she said.

IN SEPTEMBER, I returned to Cima Dome with my partner. We followed the Teutonia Peak Trail to the top of the dome, where we could take in the scope of the fire’s devastation. Wide swaths of land were scarred black, but the few patches of earth that had been spared were green and lush, dense with Joshua trees. On our way back through the burned forest, we encountered a tarantula, a jackrabbit, and several strange and beautifully patterned beetles. If this was life after the fire, we said to each other, imagine what it had looked like before.

It’s thought that Joshua trees are gradually migrating north, toward cooler climes, an image that’s both tragic and moving. Slowly, Joshua trees will flee the hottest and driest parts of the Southwest to survive. I imagine people will, too. ✦

Meg Bernhard is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times , and elsewhere. Her book on wine and power will be published by Bloomsbury in June.

Obsessions

SO REAL

The artists, collectors, and escapists of the miniatures world have a home in Las Vegas

By Oona Robertson

Paris Renfroe leans over a worktable in his garage shop. An order just came in for an oval burlwood table with a pedestal base. The design is his own — sleek and warm and timeless. When finished, it will have the glow of something well crafted, with the artist’s touch visible in the hand-rubbed finish, the hand-sanded edge. It will take him about 20 minutes to build. The table will measure 2 1/2 inches high, which in 1:12 scale is equal to 30 inches.

Renfroe himself has never seen much distinction between the world of miniatures and the full-sized world, whose importance feels less and less firm the more time one spends immersed in other scales. “I don’t look at my miniatures as miniatures. I look at them as if I’m building full-sized furniture. The only difference is, I don’t make everything function,” Renfroe says. Miniature hinges, for example, tend to break. “You’ve got to realize the force of a full-sized person in 1-inch scale. For me, at 6 foot 2 inches, I’m 72 feet tall. I’m a giant. Can you imagine a giant opening a kitchen cabinet? He’s going to rip it off.”

Renfroe tends to play with scale like this as he’s speaking, zooming in and out to suit the needs of his current analogy. The images he takes of his miniatures — interiors that looked pulled out of design magazines — read as full-sized until Renfroe’s giant hand comes into the frame.

This emanating glow of reality, this refusal to see his miniatures as any less significant because of their size, is what makes him so good at what he does. After a decade in the business, he can calculate scale in his head, distinguish at first glance an amateur from an expert, and render detail with the finesse

SCALE ABILITY

Miniatures artists create detailed designs in dollsize proportions.

of a craftsman. Sometimes this means using the same material, like the burlwood veneer he will glue onto the plastic base of this table, but sometimes it means changing material to better convince the eye. A glass tabletop looks more lifelike in miniature if made using a thin sheet of acrylic.

His shop is set up with the basic tools needed for furniture making, as well as drawers containing thin scraps of wood and plastic and images cut from magazines that he will frame to make tiny art — nothing is too small to be useful. On the table sit two works in progress, a house modeled after one in the movie Ex Machina , complete with a stone fireplace and working electric lights made from seed pods, and a display for model cars with a wall of 3-D-printed guns for a client in Abu Dhabi. Renfroe chooses his jobs carefully, preferring clients who love his work and want to collaborate on something original, instead of replicating their own home or one they’ve seen. “It doesn’t matter what the scale is, but we’re still discussing design, how things should function, how many rooms, where it’s going to be displayed. So, it really feels like something that I’ve always done, which is just had a passion for design,” he says.

Renfroe moved to Las Vegas in 2011, a time when dollhouse culture was diminishing, and the internet had not yet created a resurgence in the love of tiny things. Dollhouses were first brought to the United States by English colonists, who wanted to carry a small representation of their past with them. “They hired the same craftsmen who built their homes to make miniatures so that they would have this as a keepsake or maybe even as an architectural model to maybe build a new one,” Renfroe says. Through industrialization, dollhouses became toys, and a consumer culture sprung up around them. Wholesale shows, where owners of dollhouse, miniature, and hobby shops bought a year’s worth of inventory to sell at their stores, became industry standard. The Cottage Industry Miniaturists Trade Association (CIMTA) in Las Vegas ran 19792019. But the prevalence of brick-and-mortar shops and the popularity of dollhouse collecting had long been in decline. “I think what happened is, things died off in the ’80s because a lot of the people who had those collections or that had the deep pockets were just getting old and they were dying,” Renfroe says.

When CIMTA shut down, Renfroe and two other locals from the miniatures world,

Cindy Gonzales and Lisa Hicks, started a new show. They took a decidedly modern approach to the first International Market of Miniature Artisans, or IMoMA, which took place in 2020. “We didn’t want anything with dollhouse in it because, although you can use miniatures in a dollhouse, we didn’t want to be focused on that, because there’s so many other different genres and niches within miniatures as a whole,” Renfroe says.

These niches have only multiplied since 2020 because of COVID-induced quarantine, when confinement caused many artists to begin working in miniature and many people to seek sources of entertainment

and levity on the internet. At this year’s IMoMA, “minfluencers” are coming in from around the country to meet and greet fans. One such minfluencer is Tonya Ruiz, whose Instagram account exploded in 2020, when she began a series of quarantine Barbies.

“One had insomnia, one was baking bread, one started a new hobby — you know, all the things we were all doing — overeating junk food, binge-watching TV,” Ruiz says. While some people in her community on #dollstagram put their dolls in fantasy worlds like midcentury living rooms, Ruiz prefers to create scenes of her daily life. “Mine is like a reality Barbie, my life in miniature,” she says. Indeed, people seem

PARIS RENFROE

Along with Cindy Gonzales and Lisa Hicks, Renfroe started IMoMA in Las Vegas in 2020.

UNLV PERFORMING ARTS CENTER’S

46TH SEASON

MNOZIL BRASS: GOLD

Friday, March 3, 2023 · 7:30 p.m.

$50 - $40 - $30 - $20

With sell-out performances around the globe, Mnozil Brass, performs a wide-ranging repertoire with fearlessness, immense technical skill, and typical Viennese “schmäh” (loosely translated: a kind of sarcastic charm!).

BOKYUNG BYUN

Friday, March 24, 2023 · 7:30 p.m.

$30

The UNLV Performing Arts Center welcomes the 2021 winner of the Guitar Foundation of America’s International Concert Artist Competition, Bokyung Byun, who was praised by Classical Guitar Magazine as “confident and quite extraordinary.”

EMANUEL AX

Thursday, April 20, 2023 · 7:30 p.m.

$50 - $40 - $30 - $20

Few, if any, can match the piano artistry of GRAMMY® Awardwinning Emanuel Ax The Seattle Times extolled, “Ax...has a way of seeming to enfold every listener in a metaphorical embrace.”

This concert is dedicated to the memory of Bernice Fischer.

MENG SU

Friday, May 5, 2023 · 7:30 p.m.

$30

Multifaceted guitarist Meng Su is captivating audiences around the world with her stunning virtuosity and refined artistry. New York Concert Review writes her performance is “... seemingly effortless and stunningly polished.”

TWO BY SIX: SEXTETS OF BRAHMS & DVOŘÁK

Thursday, February 2, 2023 • 7:30 p.m.• $25

A FRENCH TOAST: MUSIC OF DEBUSSY, RAVEL, AND CHAUSSON

Thursday, March 23, 2023 • 7:30 p.m.• $25

THE MIRÓ QUARTET

Tuesday, April 18, 2023 • 7:30 p.m.• $30

Sponsored by Dr. Mitchell & Pearl Forman

Presented by the UNLV Chamber Music Society

Charles Vanda Honorary Concert

especially interested in the most everyday objects. Her most viewed post last year was a miniature ice tray.

Ruiz is not sure why miniatures are so

popular. “It is a pop phenomenon on social media,” she says. “It is so popular that a lot of toy companies are even making miniatures for adults to buy.” Other companies have

caught on, too. Ruiz was recently commissioned to make a laundry room scene for Clorox. Ruiz doesn’t make her own objects to create her worlds, but sources them from Etsy and eBay in 1:6 scale, or Barbie scale. “I am not a crafter, I am a collector,” she says.

Typical miniature shows only allow vendors working in 1:12 and 1:24 scale, the typical scales of dollhouses. “But the artisans that we want to start inviting aren’t making miniatures for dollhouses. That’s the difference,” Renfroe says. “There’s a lot of really cool stuff out there that is just considered art, and that’s what we want to focus on.”

A couple of years ago, Jordan Affonso, another of this year’s minfluencers, had an idea for a project called The Tiny Art Experiment. He invited miniatures artists from around the world to contribute a piece to a larger diorama. “So, I’m going to be bringing not only my own stuff, but also the results of that experiment, to Las Vegas to put on display. It’s about 14 miniature buildings that are Star Wars themed, with detail and accessories and vehicles and little action figures and characters and aliens that were all made by different artists from around the world,” Affonso says.

The line between art and toy, display piece and interactive object, is becoming trickier to distinguish in the world of miniatures, which people reach from seemingly every possible angle.

Las Vegas-born artist Mary Sabo, like many, began working in miniature during quarantine. She says, “I think people feel like they have so little agency and control over the world around them, but if you have this little tiny world of your own, it’s comforting, maybe.” Her work, which is sometimes displayed with a magnifying glass next to it to encourage a closer look, focuses on the landscape and the interior. “It all has a surrealist kind of twinge to it. Stuff that maybe I wish existed, fantasy worlds,” Sabo says.

This contradiction between the real and surreal may be one of the reasons why people are so enamored of miniature objects. Affonso says, “There’s a surrealistic quality, but at the same time, you know the object in front of you is real, so it’s almost like, How is this real? It’s so small but it’s the real thing, but it isn’t, but it is. It’s sort of a layering of surprise and an endearing quality.”

There’s also an element of nostalgia. Jes-

sica Oreck, who runs the Office of Collecting and Design at The Historic Commercial Center District, enjoys watching peoples’ reactions to the objects in her museum. “It is devoted to the diminutive and the

discarded,” Oreck says. “It is essentially an elaborate expression of leftover fragments from our collective memories.”

Visitors are encouraged to interact with Oreck’s miniatures. “It isn’t about the monetary value of an object; it’s about the value of an object as a token of memory for each visitor. And that feels too personal and too delicate to put behind glass. It has to be something you hold in the palm of your hand,” Oreck says. “Each of these pieces of trash/treasure hold what I call a ‘residue of attention.’ All the things they’ve witnessed, the love and use they’ve been afforded, people get to run their fingers through that when they visit. To me, it feels a little like magic.”

That magic is magnetic — so much so that even the miniatures we see in little squares through the windows of our devices encourage us to lean in and try, at least, to touch. ✦

The International Market of Miniature Artisans is scheduled Feb. 22-26 at the Gold Coast Hotel & Casino. It is open to the public, and tickets cost $12 for adults and $6 for kids. For more information, visit imomalv.com

“There’s a surrealistic quality, but at the same time, you know the object in front of you is real, so it’s almost like, How is this real ?” — Jordan Affonso

NEVADA BALLET THEATRE

Music from Etta James Choreography by Trey McIntyre February 18 & 19, 2023

Plus, George Balanchine’s Allegro Brillante and a World Premiere by Sidra Bell

when young Douglas LaVan Martineau returned late at night on August 6, 1950, from a Boy Scouts camping trip.

Like his mother who’d died eight years earlier at the age of 32, his father (also named Douglas) was an alcoholic. He had been drinking in the living room and left a lit cigarette on the couch before retiring. That night the local fire department was having a convention in town, so no one responded to the blazing house in Cedar City, Utah.

As Martineau wrote in the preface to his masterpiece on rock writing, The Rocks Begin to Speak, there is not a Paiute word for ‘orphanage.’ Following the funeral, a one-armed Paiute man named Edrick Bushhead told him, “Come stay with me and be my son.” Other Paiutes quickly volunteered as additional foster parents — Maimie Merrycats and James and Mabel Yellowjacket from the Cedar Band, and Wendel John from the Shivwits Band. One of his daughters, Shanandoah (Shanan) Anderson, says his new extended family taught him sign language, dances, beading, how to make bows and arrows, and how to tan hides, all while he was finishing Cedar City High School. Although he was white, he thought of himself as a Paiute, a “reverse apple — white on the outside and red on the inside,” Anderson recalls.

When Martineau turned 19, he and his Paiute friends decided to enlist in the Air Force rather than be drafted into the Army or Navy. “What are your skills?” the recruiter asked. “I can herd cattle,” he replied. “If you can do that, you can herd airplanes.” Dispatched to Korea in 1951 to serve as an air traffic controller, he shared a Quonset hut with the cryptography department, where seven of his tent-mates worked as codebreakers. It wasn’t long before he realized that he could use many of the same principles and methods to help decipher the ancient petroglyphs (engravings or etchings) and pictographs (paintings or drawings) he’d grown up seeing on rock faces in the desert Southwest.

After he left the Air Force in 1959, Martineau decided to devote the rest of his life to cataloging and interpreting this “rock art,” the popular name for images left by people who lived hundreds or even thousands of years ago. Paiutes and other tribes prefer that it be called “rock writing” for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that it was not intended to be decorative but to tell a story using universally comprehensible symbols.

But that same rock writing, sacred to Indigenous Peoples and critical to understanding ancient cultures, is being slowly destroyed. As urban development and outdoor activities such as off-roading and tourism affect natural areas throughout the Southwest, graffiti and trampling are becoming more commonplace at cultural sites. Panels that Martineau catalogued so meticulously and archaeologists have studied for so long have been damaged. Will they still be here in a thousand more years, for others to learn from and connect with?

IN 2018, NEVADA Highway Patrol Troopers pulled over two 28-year-old Elko men who were covered in blue paint and had 100 spray-paint cans in their car. A news release from the United States Attorney’s Office for the

District of Nevada described how the pair had painted graffiti at several locations at White River Narrows in the Basin and Range National Monument in Lincoln County, including over a rock face with petroglyphs sacred to the Paiute and Shoshone tribes. A witness to the crime called the police. One of the men was sentenced to six months for misdemeanor conspiracy and a year-and-aday imprisonment for felony violation of the Archaeological Resources Protection Act. The other was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment for misdemeanor conspiracy followed by eight months of home confinement. U.S. Attorney Jason M. Frierson for the District of Nevada said, “This ruling demonstrates that such crimes will not be met with a slap on the wrist. Our office will continue to work to ensure that anyone who desecrates sacred tribal lands and artifacts are (sic) held accountable.”

Part of the problem with calling rock writings “art” is that doing so implicitly encourages such defacement, says Daniel Bulletts, the Kaibab Band of Southern Paiutes’ cultural resource director. Vandals might think to themselves, “Maybe I could put my art up there next to (theirs) to see how many millions of years it lasts,” he says.

Archaeologist Kevin Rafferty, a College of Southern Nevada professor emeritus, has studied rock writing for more than 30 years. He estimates there are 1,700 sites in Nevada, seen by more and more individuals and families all the time. News outlets widely reported on the skyrocketing outdoor recreation during the pandemic, as people looked for activities they could do while socially distanced. Younger generations continue to show increasing interest in the outdoors. Terri Janison, Friends of Red Rock Canyon’s executive director, regrets that the 13-mile Scenic Drive there had to be closed a few times in 2022, but says Red Rock is being “loved to death” by close to 4 million visitors annually, as many as Zion National Park in Utah receives. Of course, among these crowds are some criminals, who etch their initials or spray-paint words over

There was nothing left of his home but cinders

petroglyphs and pictographs. Or worse …

Eddie Hawk Jim of the Pahrump Band of Southern Paiutes says the petroglyphs around Mt. Charleston, located in the Paiutes’ revered ancestral lands known in English as the Spring Mountains, have been destroyed by off-roading and spray-painting. In 2008, a 58-year-old man removed a 300-pound boulder with a petroglyph showing seven sheep and placed it in the front yard of his Pahrump home. An April 2011 news story in the Pahrump Valley Times reported that the vandal was sentenced to six months in federal prison and one year of supervised release.

Rock writings in the highly visited Red Rock are also suffering. Last year, graffiti was discovered along two hiking trails, the first at Lost Creek and the second at Calico II. From pottery artifacts discovered there, it’s believed that the area was occupied by Ancestral Puebloans and then Paiutes at least 1,000 years ago, and possibly by PaleoIndians as early as 11,000 B.C.

In May 2011, the Red Rock Canyon

Interpretive Association and Bureau of Land Management asked Stratum Unlimited, led by archaeologist Johannes (Jannie) Loubser, to mitigate graffiti on 17 rock panels at Lost Creek. In one instance, graffiti had been left directly on top of a pictograph. Loubser returned to lead a graffiti removal workshop at Lost Creek and Calico II in 2014. In all, he has removed graffiti from three sites at Red Rock, four sites at White River Narrows, one site near Alamo, and one site near Reno/ Sparks, and he has assessed nine other sites.

Too often, Loubser says, well-meaning but untrained conservationists whom he calls “graffiti vigilantes” damage rock writings even more. “Less is more” best describes his method of remediation: using the least invasive techniques for removal first to prevent further damage. Several mechanical and chemical techniques must be pretested on similar rock surfaces elsewhere and in a certain order depending on the particular surface. If graffiti can’t be safely removed, it can be camouflaged, he says.

But an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of remediation, camouflage, or prosecution. Madeline Ware Van der Voort, the BLM’s state archaeologist and preservation office deputy, echoes many in the preservation community when she says that education is key. In this, too, Martineau was a pioneer. He spent more than 40 years studying and interpreting the symbols etched and painted on rocks so that other people might better understand the stories written there and thereby respect and preserve them.

Douglas LaVan Martineau (left); an example of rock writing in Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area (above right) MARTINEAU COURTESY; RED ROCK, ANDERSON: ALEC PRIDGEON; MOUSE’S TANK: KEVIN RAFFERTY/COURTESY

THE PEOPLES BEHIND THE PICTURES

BEGINNING AFTER HIS Air Force service, Martineau drove across the United States, Mexico, and Canada to sketch, photograph, and prepare site maps of rock-writing panels. He documented petroglyphs and pictographs at hundreds of sites across Nevada and elsewhere in North America, taking more than 25,000 photographs. At first he traveled by himself and then later took his daughter Shanan Anderson, who helped him compile eight thick notebooks of pencil drawings of symbols with descriptions as detailed as any prepared by contemporary site stewards.

Anderson remembers driving with her dad from powwow to powwow or tribe to tribe, accepting free meals and earning gas money by selling arrowheads that Martineau carved while sitting on the tailgate of his truck, a curious crowd gathering around him. It was a simple, nomadic lifestyle that culminated in Martineau’s best selling book as well as a 1992 coauthored work titled, Southern Paiutes: Legends, Lore, Language, and Lineage. By the time he died of colon cancer in 2000 at the age of 68, Martineau had become a legend. Anderson, who went on to marry into the Moapa Band of Paiutes, is now working with an artist to publish her father’s notebooks as one large volume, which will enable today’s archaeologists to compare the state of rock-writing panels in the late 1950s to early 1970s with their present condition.

Central to Martineau’s work were the same questions that have perplexed archaeologists and anthropologists throughout time: Who made these rock writings and when? And what were they saying?

There is general agreement that the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation northeast of Reno holds the honors of oldest American rock writing. Researchers think etchings in boulders there are at least 10,000 and perhaps 15,000 years old. They are rivaled by a few Mojave Desert sites in California; much depends on the dating techniques used (more on that later).

One of Kevin Rafferty’s favorite research haunts in Clark County is the Valley of Fire State Park, specifically Petroglyph Canyon on the trail to Mouse’s Tank. Rafferty says the area was used by humans at least 7,500 years ago but was more occupied 2,000 years later by the Archaic peoples, then the Ancestral Puebloans, and finally the Paiute and Patayan cultures about A.D. 1100-1200. Rafferty ventures that the majority of the fresher-looking petroglyphs that contain a large number of representational motifs (bighorn sheep, humans, possible insects) could be

tentatively dated to roughly the years 300-1200. The more abstract ones are probably Archaic age (3500 B.C.-A.D. 300). Some anthropomorphs (human-like figures) with splayed fingers and any H-shaped motifs are probably Patayan (precursors to modern-day Lower Colorado peoples) dating from about A.D. 900, while anything that is scratched into the rock as motifs and much of the pictographic (painted) record are likely Paiute, dating from A.D. 1100 forward.

Native Americans originated in Eurasia and migrated across the land bridge linking Asia and North America. Two separate scientific DNA studies from about four years ago showed that ancient populations then spread across the Americas some 13,000 years ago.

One problem with using DNA from bones unearthed in archaeological excavations for genetic studies is that it violates the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, passed in 1990. With that in mind, UNLV anthropology professor Karen Harry could not contain her excitement when talking about upcoming research in Southern Nevada. Beginning about 1500 B.C., the Ancestral Puebloans would extract fibers from agave and yucca leaves and compress them into small wads called quids for chewing or sucking on. The DNA from their saliva is still often viable enough to be sequenced, and use of saliva does not violate NAGPRA. Harry and her graduate students intend to sequence the DNA from eight or more quids collected at a site outside Kanab, Utah, then compare that DNA with other DNA from the same time period in Southern

Shanan Anderson (left) with a copy of her father’s book ; a panel near Mouse’s Tank in Valley of Fire State Park depicts shaman figures (above right)

Nevada to find out whether migrants introduced agriculture or local peoples started farming themselves. It will also help to determine how the Ancestral Puebloans are related to modern tribes.

Beginning about A.D. 750, populations swelled and villages developed, culminating in irrigation systems for growing corn, beans, and squash; large, underground rooms known as kivas that were used for social occasions and spiritual ceremonies; the beginnings of jewelry-making with turquoise and shells; and development of trade routes. Over time, the individualistic worldviews in the early cultures of the Great Basin (comprising the Mojave Desert, Owens Valley, and Nevada) gave way to more collectivist values, says UNLV anthropology doctoral student Manuel De Cespedes. Rock writings reflected this cultural shift, changing from abstract to representational images of humans and sheep.

Shamans (medicine men) were depicted in rock writing as having horns, representing the buffalo and bighorn rams that gave

power to them, Anderson says. They held key positions in Indigenous communities and were responsible for most rock writing from about A.D. 50 until collectivist values emerged with larger villages and towns at the end of the first millennium.

Archaeologist David Whitley, who has studied and written extensively about shamanism, says, “In the Great Basin, the chiefs and the shamans were the same people. There you see the position of religious authority is tied to a position of political power.” Initiations into shamanism, traditionally reserved for males, required years of preparation culminating in a druginduced vision. Trances could be brought on by isolation or sensory deprivation, stress from fasting or pain, dancing, or hallucinogens such as jimson weed and native tobacco, “which has eight times the nicotine content of Virginia Slims,” Whitley quips.

He argues that shamans sought out rocks, caves, and water sources at night to enter the spirit world and obtain supernatural powers to cure (or cause) illness, pray for

rain, bring about good luck, find lost objects, and battle evil shamans. When dawn broke, they would etch images of their visions on rocks at these sacred sites, leaving petroglyphs in the rock varnish, which is a coating of clay minerals and/or oxides left on the surface by weather over time. The tools used to etch or “peck” through the varnish to expose the lighter layer underneath were hammerstones of quartz or other minerals, knives, or chisels. Quartz was thought to confer supernatural power to the petroglyph because when struck it generates a flash of light, adding drama for onlookers.

As paint for pictographs, shamans mixed hematite for the red hues, kaolin clay for white, and charcoal or manganese oxide for black. To bind the paint after it dried, the artists added plant resins, animal blood and fats, or a liquid such as water. If water was not available, saliva or urine was substituted. Common pictographs were handprints, made during ritual puberty ceremonies for both boys and girls.

DATING A HISTORY

ROCK WRITING IS as old as Stone Age cave art found in Europe and Australia beginning about 3.3 million years ago and extending to the end of the Pleistocene about 11,650 years ago. On this basis and also Native American origins in Eurasia, Martineau suggested that if Native American pictography is eventually proven to be identical to the original Old World system, then “it represents the survival of the actual parent system of almost all writing right up until the beginning of our modern era.” In consulting the elders of tribes across North America and studying cryptanalysis, he discovered there was a universal sign language that “overcame the difficulties posed by extreme differences in (spoken) languages. The symbols for passing through, water, in front, and coming down bear close resemblances to movements for such concepts in the sign language,” he wrote.

Given what researchers know about Ancestral Puebloans and their culture, how precisely can they pin down the date(s) of any given rock writing? Not very well — but they’re getting better at it. One limitation is the need to avoid damaging the panels in any way. Also, more than one time period is often represented at a site, though this may sometimes offer clues. One example is the 300 rock writing panels with 1,700 designs at Sloan Canyon in Henderson, which archaeologists believe span the Archaic era to about 200 years ago. Kevin Rafferty points out that on one panel there, a man with a hat is depicted on horseback. It could refer to someone like Jedediah Smith, a hunter and trapper who crossed the territory that is now Nevada in 1827 on his way to or from California. Or, it might reflect the 1776

expedition of Fray Francisco Hermenegildo Garcés, a missionary priest who was the first known European to visit the territory currently known as Nevada.

Identifying a design’s subject matter, such as a man on horseback, is the most common method to date an individual design safely. Horses with riders appear in petroglyphs throughout the Great Basin and California, Whitley says. Bows and arrows, which were introduced about A.D. 500, provide another example. Before that, Ancestral Puebloans hunted with a spear and wooden spear-thrower called an atlatl to give it more momentum. The spear had a conical depression that fit into the hook of the atlatl. A hunter would raise the atlatl over his head in an arc and send the spear off to its target some distance away. Some panels on Atlatl Rock at the Valley of Fire clearly show hunters holding an atlatl, meaning those petroglyphs were etched prior to A.D. 500.

Another nondestructive way to gauge the age of rock writing by relative dating is to assess the condition of a pictograph. If it’s more degraded or fainter than another, it’s possibly older. Although a number of weather-related variables can lead to wrong conclusions, this method is less prone to error if it is cross-checked using other methods.

Whitley and Arizona State University geography professor Ronald Dorn have been using three chronometric methods to date the rock varnish over petroglyphs. Before 11,000 years ago, the environment was wetter and less dusty here in the West, producing a varnish that is now rounded and lumpy. But since that time, the drier, dustier conditions produced a flat or lamellate varnish. To date pictographs, the only method used so far has been radiocarbon-dating of organic matter in the pigment binder mentioned above. Combining two or more relative dating and chronometric techniques has led to more robust conclusions about age.

PAST IS PROLOGUE

MARTINEAU’S BOOK HAS been reprinted many times, and as a result he was asked to give talks and consult with several tribes. Anderson says, “He received criticism in the white world because he was a white guy teaching Indian writing and had never attended college. He was put down a lot,

Continued on Pg. 62

Detail of sheep figures on a panel in White River Narrows (opposite page); a sample of the “H” shapes found in Grapevine Canyon in the Avi Kwa Ame region (this page, top left). Above, a government-placed marker indicates the presence of a protected cultural site; samples of writing in White River Narrows; and a panel in the Bird Springs region suggests damage done in an attempted removal.

“If money (or bureaucracy or politics) were no object, what would you do to improve Nevada’s healthcare system?” We put this question to six experienced insiders who we expected to have grand ideas, typically seen as the catalyst for big change. Yet their answers were surprisingly pragmatic. When you boil it all down, they want the same thing everyone else does: a system that puts people before business.

HEALTHY IMAGINATION

Thought leaders share big ideas on how to improve Nevada’s healthcare

WRITTEN BY:

Nicholas Barnette

Anne Davis

Clement Gelly

Heidi Kyser

Devote more resources to mental health and innovative mental health treatments

Rochelle and Dustin Hines

UNLV Neuroscience professors and directors of the Hines Group

Comprehensive Neuroscience Lab

•Nevada ranks 51st in access to mental healthcare in the U.S. Despite this grim statistic, Rochelle Hines, who holds a PhD in neuroscience — as does her partner Dustin Hines — sees promise in the state’s burgeoning institutions, such as the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, Clark County Children’s Mental Health Consortium, and UNLV. “It’s just figuring out how we can better support these institutions and connect them even more with our communities… and also remove barriers to access,” Rochelle says. “If a patient really wants to try an innovative therapy, you have to look at the barriers that might be preventing them from being able to access that.”

Both Drs. Hines have seen a more integrated model for mental healthcare during postdoctoral fellowships at the Tufts University School for Medicine in Boston. “In Massachusetts, you could go to one of these massive clinics, and you could see your primary care physician,” Rochelle says. “And if you needed behavioral health support, you could go two floors up and see that person; if you needed an MRI, you could go two floors down and see that person. That really removes barriers for people, when they know where to go, they know what providers are there, and their primary care provider can link them in with the specific person, who may even be in the same facility.”

Dustin Hines adds that integrating mental healthcare with other health services is tantamount to improving patient health. “We understand very well that mental health and cardiac diseases, say, are comorbid. So, if you have mental health issues, it’s very likely that

Nevada's U.S. ranking in access to mental healthcare

later in life, you’ll die of a heart attack,” Dustin says. “A lot of places are looking at this, but we don’t have the resources to really connect all the doctors at a giant hospital, to pull in the mental health expert with a cardiologist.”

Beyond holistic integration, both Dustin and Rochelle Hines emphasize that mental health treatments need to be updated to be more effective. Dustin says, “The treatments that we have for depression largely came out in the 1950s and have not been improved upon other than things like toxicology … Fluoxetine and other common SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, used for treating depression) work in about 20 to 30 percent of patients. So that means, generously, 70 percent of the people are treatment resistant.” Conversely, he points to psychedelics as a form of treatment that has been shown to be effective at an earlier rate in around 70 percent of patients. In patients with PTSD, one dose of psychedelic therapy has proven to be effective, which, Dustin says, “is something I haven’t seen in my entire career of working with AstraZeneca.”

Rochelle adds that SSRIs can take two to six weeks to take effect. “Oftentimes, patients need to wait that six weeks and find it’s not really working, or it has negative effects,” Rochelle says. “Then they have to try another medication. It can take months before the person starts to see benefits, and in the meantime, maybe they could also be better supported by having access to behavioral healthcare.”

“We’re not saying (SSRIs) aren’t good treatments,” Dustin says. “It’s just time that we innovate on mental health and come up with new treatments.” — NB

Recruit doctors through graduate medical education and retain them through higher wages

Doug Geinzer CEO of High Performance Providers

•“Any great city has medical schools, and there’s a blossoming academic medical infrastructure here in Las Vegas.” That’s Doug Geinzer’s belief, based on his 10 years as CEO of High Performance Providers — a venture Geinzer founded that connects self-insured patients with providers through direct contracting — and as former executive director of Las Vegas HEALS, a nonprofit promoting health education, advocacy, and leadership in Southern Nevada.

Geinzer says graduate medical education (GME) is critical in diversifying a community’s medical offerings, as it attracts “more specialists and subspecialists to teach those areas.” Moreover, he sees medical schools as sites of training and learning for both students and faculty — “the students teaching the teacher and vice versa. When you have a bunch of students going, ‘But, why?’ it forces the senior political leadership to answer with factual information that they know will be fact-checked by the young kids.”

While GME serves as a recruitment tool for medical professionals, Geinzer sees retention as an issue linked to provider reimbursement. “We tackled recruitment with the expansion of GME,” he says. “(Nationally) 57 percent of doctors will stay where they do the residency.” Thus, he believes, keeping medical students and residents in

Southern Nevada requires a focus on retention, which is linked to compensation. “What a lot of people don’t realize is that compensation is directly tied to provider reimbursement, how much they’re getting paid to do the work they do, and that comes down to the commercial carriers,” he says.

Direct contracting — which allows “employers to buy (medical services) directly from providers” — is one method that Geinzer sees as benefiting employers, patients, and physicians. Direct contracting “allows the employer, who’s writing the check, to write a smaller check, so the employer is saving a lot of money. In the world of surgery, they save on average, 40 to 50 percent,” he says. This, he explains, would make healthcare more affordable. “We all have these high deductible health plans because the employer cost-shifted to us, the workers, and they all have this max out-of-pocket so that we can’t afford the care that we need,” he says.

According to Geinzer, direct contracting benefits employers, who save money on plans; it benefits employees, who save on the actual cost of the service, because, when patients go through a direct contract, there’s no copay; and it benefits providers, who get paid at a higher reimbursement level.

All of this, in turn, would increase physicians’ wages, incentivizing them to stay practicing in their communities. — NB

37% of Southern Nevada doctors stay where they do residencies

Encourage

The PET scan was the aberration.”

With a comprehensive view of the patient’s health, Wint says, a better approach would have been to wait six months and re-scan her brain to see if any signs of frontotemporal dementia persisted. As for the primary care doctor, he could have followed up with the cardiologist or radiologist who made the diagnosis and probed further to find out how they arrived at what should have been a surprising conclusion about his patient.

26 DAYS

Average wait time to see a doctor in the U.S.

Dylan Wint Director of Cleveland Clinic’s Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health

As an MD-PhD with specialties in neurology and psychology, Dylan Wint is good at digesting the abstractions of the patient-practitioner relations he’s observed over 20 years in his field. The top thing he sees as lacking across the medical profession is what he calls a “longitudinal approach” to patient care.

Here’s an example: A Las Vegas woman goes to see a cardiologist at a comprehensive medical practice out of town. While there, she falls and gets hit in the head by an automatic door. She tells her cardiologist about this during the exam, and he notices that she seems confused and woozy. So, he orders a PET scan of her brain. A radiologist reads the PET scan and diagnoses frontotemporal dementia. The woman returns to Las Vegas and sees her primary care doctor about the diagnosis. He refers her to the Lou Ruvo Center, where Wint gives her a thorough neurological exam, determining she does not have dementia; she had a concussion. Between the fall and the correct diagnosis, months pass, during which the woman and her care team are assessing everything through the lens of an illness that isn’t actually there.

“The cardiologist was doing the right thing to check her brain, because she did have an event,” Wint says. “But I know this patient. There’s nothing else that would lead to a diagnosis of dementia.

“That (used to be) the role of the traditional primary care or family doctor,” Wint says. “They didn’t just know you, they knew your family, lived in your neighborhood, know your history, the area. With the fracturing of healthcare we’ve lost that longitudinal view, the primary care physician who isn’t just sending patients out for consultations.”

One problem with regaining this traditional approach is it would require shifting how practitioners are rewarded. Rather than reimbursing them for the number of times they see a patient, or the time spent with them, pay would have to account for the quality of the care itself.

“There are small incentives for doing the extra things like talking to other providers and explaining test results,” Wint says. “Those should be core features of the system: coordination of care among providers, careful explanation to the patient of what’s going on.”

To get the larger picture, he suggests that the follow-up surveys patients get after every office visit ask further-reaching questions, rather than focusing on a single contact with an individual provider; for example, “How did this visit fit into your overall treatment plan?” and “How are you progressing?”

Zooming out even further, Wint says, the problem is that we don’t do healthcare in the U.S.; we do illness care. “Everything is centered around what happens when your health fails.”

“Health is a concept that starts at birth and fuses everything we do until the day we die,” he says. “To set up a system that willfully ignores that is setting up a system that’s bound to fail patients.” — HK

8%

Amount by which that wait time has increased in the last five years

1/3 – Number of seniors who visit at least five different doctors each year

34% Increase in number of specialists Medicare recipients saw 2000-2019

9% American adults who report poor communication with their healthcare provider

physicians to take a big-picture view of each patient’s health

49%

BIG IDEA

Make primary care more affordable

David Weismiller Professor of Medicine in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at UNLV

•Family physician David Weismiller has focused much of his career on education. In addition to being a professor at UNLV’s Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine, he teaches continuing ed courses for physicians with the American Association of Family Physicians, the Emirates Family Medicine Society Scientific Congress, and other organizations. Through this work, he raises awareness of the cost and access barriers preventing effective patient care.

These ideas, Weismiller says, “aren’t very sexy. I mean, who wants to talk about this stuff?” Still, he believes the most pressing issues facing healthcare in Nevada — and the U.S. in general — are its high prices and the difficulty finding primary care physicians.

Typically, Weismiller explains, the more a community spends on health care, the more the life expectancy of its members goes up. This is true in most of the world’s developed nations, but not the United States. Among comparable countries, the U.S. has the highest cost of health care and very little to show for it. The reasons are complex. Insurance in America is, by and large, linked with employment. Employers rarely

Number of insured Americans who get their coverage through work

invest in coverage for longer-term or chronic issues, because they won’t see the benefits of such investment during their employees’ tenure. This, in turn, leads to outsized costs for acute treatment down the road, and to highly preventable deaths.

At the same time, Weismiller explains, those without jobs or benefits simply can’t afford to see a primary care doctor. The leading causes of preventable disease and death in the U.S. include tobacco, excessive weight, and excessive alcohol use — all of which are best treated by a primary care physician. For instance, Nevada Medicaid covers a medication that reduces the risk of diabetes by 17 percent, but it won’t pay for you to see a registered dietitian to facilitate lifestyle modifications, which would halve the likelihood of getting diabetes. This creates a cascading effect of costs and inefficiencies, whereby the burden of primary care falls on emergency room doctors and nurses, who are not trained to address these concerns. “They’re not talking to you about this in the emergency department,” Weismiller says. “‘Yes, you should quit smoking. But right now, we’ve got to deal with your heart attack.’”

Accessing primary care physicians is especially pressing for Nevada. We are, essentially, a rural state — aside from Washoe and Clark, no county has a population greater than 61,000. Investing more in well-distributed healthcare would go a long way toward addressing preventable illnesses and deaths throughout the state, Weismiller says.

He has hope, despite healthcare problems being highly politicized in America. For him, as a doctor and as an educator, it begins with addressing the No. 1 complaint people have about doctors: “We don’t listen.” Weismiller begins his second-year lectures specifically telling students how to listen to patients.

This is essential, he contends, not just to more effectively treat patients, but also to build back trust with the public at large. “From there, we’re able to deal with all the other issues in a reasonable way.” — CG

50% 2

Reduction in diabetes disease risk with non-covered dietitian

Number of urban Nevada counties

17% 15

Reduction in diabetes disease risk with Medicaid-covered prescription drugs

Number of rural Nevada counties

1. 95 MILLION

Nevadans

To meet national populationto-provider averages, Nevada would need an extra:

4,290 Registered nurses

5,719 Certified nursing assistants

BIG IDEA

A health workforce Marshall Plan

John Packham

55% 1

is a little over 20 years, Nevada has been plagued by health workforce shortages,” Packham says.

The pandemic exerted unprecedented stress on healthcare systems across Nevada, leading 55 percent of front-line healthcare workers to report burnout and fatigue in 2021. Inevitably, this has negatively affected healthcare workforce numbers in recent years: According to the most recent data, almost 2 million Nevadans live in a primary care physician (PCP) shortage area, equivalent to more than 57 percent of the state’s population. Similarly, even before COVID, Clark County recorded one PCP for every 1,760 people in 2019; in Pershing County, one for every 6,725.

John Packham, the associate dean for the Office of Statewide Initiatives at UNR, considers this shortage to be among the most pressing problems facing the state’s healthcare system today. “For as long as I've been looking at these issues, which

His solution is a health workforce Marshall Plan, reminiscent of the one implemented to rebuild Europe after World War II, to keep practitioners in-state. Just as the U.S. provided economic assistance to European nations, which created their own plans for reconstruction, the state of Nevada should invest more money in existing local academic programs, Packham argues. The idea would be to “educate and train our own” nurses and healthcare practitioners instead of drawing them from elsewhere in the country. This, he stresses, will be especially important for local nurses, as Nevada is continuing to face a critical shortage of them. As of 2021, the state needs an extra 5,719 certified nursing assistants and 4,290 registered nurses to meet national population-to-provider averages.

Packham acknowledges that keeping healthcare professionals in Nevada will require both a decrease in cost for medical education and competitive pay increases as graduates enter the workforce as teachers or providers. Yet he is adamant that his Marshall Plan for Nevada’s healthcare workforce is achievable, provided that consistent effort is made.

“(It) will require dollars, it will require changes in public policy,” he says. “But I'm optimistic that if you build those programs, make them affordable for Nevada residents and students, they will stay. And that's what we need.” — AD

Associate Dean for UNR’s Office of Statewide Initiatives

who live in a primary care health professional shortage area

of front-line workers who reported feeling burned out in 2021

Number of primary care health professionals for every 1,760 people in Clark County

but he didn’t care because he was raised reading it.” Some Indigenous People tested his knowledge, too. Anderson recalls one tribe in Arizona inviting him to see if he could read a panel of petroglyphs. He told them it was a map to a battle site. They confirmed it and led him down a path to where the battle occurred.

How should we decipher and interpret petroglyphs? What was the creator trying to say? Humans can’t help but interpret apparent messages left by other humans, but modern people can easily misinterpret the symbols of ancient peoples. For instance, we might jump to the conclusion that the image of a man holding an atlatl above his head with a deer or bighorn sheep nearby is describing a hunting episode or conveying the news that it is a good hunting ground. But we would be imputing our 21st-century experience to something that could bear no relation to the culture of the Ancestral Puebloans. “If they emphasized what they were eating in their rock art, walls would be covered with bunny rabbits,” says Whitley. (They’re not.)

Martineau would likely agree. He pointed out that hunting was so common that it was not worth celebrating except for the unusual hunt or animal. More telling is the fact that sheep were almost never depicted dead on their backs. Rather, he argued, sheep and deer symbols were used to express action or direction. To what? Water, of course.

In the desert Southwest, water has almost always been the most precious commodity. Droughts were especially widespread in western North America in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries and lasting for as many as 70 years, precisely the times when many rock writings were created. The search for water was responsible for continuing migrations within and out of the Great Basin for at least two millennia and probably much longer. Anderson interprets one panel on Atlatl Rock at the Valley of Fire as shamans sending their prayers for rain heavenward. David Whitley inferred from comments by the Numic-speaking peoples (Shoshone and Paiute tribes) that petroglyphs of Great Basin bighorn sheep depicted the spirit helpers of rain shamans. Immediately after a rain, sheep knew where desert plants would be sprouting. It was then possible to predict rain by bighorn movements, confirms James DeForge, executive director of the Bighorn Institute in Palm Desert, California.

Whitley contends that other animals were portrayed as spirit helpers as well — birds, amphibians, insects, fish, and reptiles. Rattlesnakes were the helpers of rattlesnake shamans, who could cure snakebite and handle snakes. Lizards crawling through cracks in the rocks and frogs jumping into the water represented the shaman’s ability to travel seamlessly between natural and supernatural worlds. Anthropomorphic figures are usually of shamans with elongated bodies and heads sometimes topped with headdresses.

Abstract designs are more difficult to interpret, Whitley says, and in many cases depict any of several entoptic images (geometric light images in our optical and neural systems) perceived during shamanic hallucinations. These include grids; dots, circles and flecks; concentric circles and spirals, parallel lines; zigzags and diamondchains; meanders; and nested curves. Zigzags likely represent the tracks left by a sidewinder, while diamond-chains resemble the pattern on the back of diamondback rattlesnake. Concentric circles and spirals represent whirlwinds that could concentrate supernatural powers and carry the shaman into the spirit world. Humans (shamans) were commonly portrayed with heads of concentric circles or spirals instead of facial features.

As for why rock-art creators did their work to begin with, Anderson believed the primary function was to preserve, to hand down a library of storied rocks. Daniel Bulletts says, “It depicts a story that that person saw, something that he was hunting,

something he came across. Each year that person came back to the same spot and added to that story. And other people that visit can read who did what and where certain things are and if this was good area to either harvest or hunt. It was not the domain of just shamans, as some say. That is more of a modern-day interpretation.”

Kevin Rafferty feels rock-writing creators were probably trying to depict relationships between man and the spirit world. Whitley is more explicit in that regard: “The rock-art motifs were more like pagan idols in the sense they had power. I’ve had informants tell me that if a rock-art panel is destroyed, it will release horrible sickness all over the world. But then they become important for a variety of other things. For one, they become images that serve in development of individual and group identity. People would be taught to respect, to consider sacred these sorts of things. Rock-art sites were recognized as places of supernatural power. They are potentially useful for curing yourself and getting better luck, so people would go to rock-art sites to pray and meditate.”

Professor Peter Welsh and art conservator-editor Liz Welsh of the University of Kansas, authors of Rock-Art of the Southwest, argue that rock writing may have been meant to convey all these things — and more. “I feel that Indigenous People have more at stake in the interpretation of sites, linked as the sites are to evidence of ancient occupation and, therefore, to ongoing rights,” Peter Welsh says. “Archaeologists are asking different questions of the sites, so folks tend to talk past each other. Yet, I have also experienced very encouraging collaborations.”

WRITING THE FUTURE

COLLABORATIONS WITH PARTIES beyond Indigenous communities and the scientific world will be required to preserve the rock writing Martineau dedicated his life to documenting. Some two-thirds of Nevada, 48 million acres, is public land, most of it managed by the BLM. Van der Voort outlines her agency’s current initiatives to protect rock-writing sites and educate the general public to engender respect for them.

Each of the six BLM districts in the state has one or more field offices, and each of those is assigned a staff archaeologist, she says. Site-monitoring, inspections, and patrols alert the BLM to vandalism. The Archaeological Resources Protection Act, applicable to sites more than 100 years

“Indigenous People have more at stake in the interpretation of sites, linked as the sites are to evidence of ancient occupation and, therefore, to ongoing rights.”

— Peter Welsh

old, is the main instrument for protection. If a new site is discovered, the BLM will sometimes withhold the locality from the public or, if it meets any of four criteria, nominate it for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places. In the case of rock writing, the most relevant criteria are that it 1) represents distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction, or 2) is likely to yield information important in history or prehistory.

“Education is the key,” Van der Voort says, citing the example of Project Archaeology, a Northern Nevada program meant to foster understanding of past and present cultures. The Nevada Site Stewardship Program run by the Nevada State Historic Preservation Office trains volunteers to monitor archaeological sites on a quarterly basis and report any vandalism. John Asselin, public affairs specialist of BLM’s Southern Nevada District Office, is part of the team working toward the opening of a permanent Visitor Contact Station at the Sloan Canyon National Conservation Area early this year to replace the one destroyed by vandals at

the beginning of the pandemic. Five bands of the Paiute Tribe and five other tribes are assisting in the interpretive plan for the station. Asselin says the BLM is also cooperating with tribes at Gold Butte National Monument to educate people on why the cultural sites there are important.

At Basin and Range National Monument in Lincoln County, archaeologist Robert Hickerson says 30 site stewards monitor 30 rock-writing sites dating up to 4,000 years ago, including several at White River Narrows. Alicia Styles, monument manager, adds that there is a Friends group there, along with two field rangers and a supervisory manager, to oversee sites. “We have installed interpretive kiosks to talk about the value of the resources and how to protect them,” she says. “We have a 3-D model website on prehistoric rock art that allows visitors to virtually explore and appreciate our cultural resources.” Last year, their partner, the Desert Research Institute, gave a presentation at local schools,  bringing in a drone to talk about current research and technologies, “which always sparks the interest of middle school and high school students especially,” Styles laughs.

NEVADA BACK COUNTRY WATERING HOLES

No doubt Nevada’s urban cities dish up some lavish sips and eats. But, if you’re craving something a little less refined and less confined, here’s a list of some back country establishments that are sure to deliver that “REAL NEVADA” worth making a weekend trip for!

Dirty Dick’s Belmont Saloon ♦ Belmont, NV

This uniquely named saloon is completely off-grid! Try their Famous Bloody Mary or sample the wide selection of beer, whiskey & tequila.

Santa Fe Saloon ♦ Goldfield, NV

The oldest continuously operating business in Goldfield, this saloon offers up some tasty pizza, plus favorites in the beer and liquor categories.

Happy Burro Chili & Beer ♦ Beatty, NV

Set in the heart of Beatty, this saloon has a true Old West Saloon front. Happy Burro offers award-winning chili and plenty of outdoor patio seating.

Overland hotel & Saloon ♦ Pioche, NV

Known for its spirits (and we’re not just talking about the booze) it’s the perfect place to find a local storyteller while having a cold drink.

Friends groups, grassroots organizations that form to protect places they love, are key to preservation efforts. Jim Stanger, president of the of Sloan Canyon National Conservation Area’s board, says the area counts 100-200 volunteers and three fulltime rangers. Brenda Slocumb of Friends of Gold Butte National Monument, which contains hundreds of petroglyphs, estimates 25-40 volunteer site stewards and hikeleaders keep an eye on the monument and report damage to the BLM. Friends of Red Rock Canyon’s Terri Janison oversees 353 volunteers, who maintain 60 miles of trails and remove graffiti.

Expanding on the legacy of her father, Anderson is helping to ensure that the traditions of Paiute sign language and petroglyph interpretation do not disappear. In addition to working on a published edition of her father’s notebooks, she teaches three-day classes at a cultural camp for Southern Paiutes at Grand CanyonParashant National Monument. Echoing Martineau, she says, “I can hopefully bring awareness to our own tribal people of who they are and what they were skilled at before it’s lost completely.”  ✦

ATV / Off-Roading

Mountain Biking

Bird / Wildlife Viewing

Boating / Fishing

Camping / RV Hook-up

Climbing / Bouldering

Ghost Town Exploring

Learn

Golfing

Hiking

UFO Spotting

History & Petroglyphs

TAKE

SLOAN CANYON 101 TRAIL

By Heidi Kyser

Ah, February … the month where New Year’s resolutions go to die. If you promised yourself to exercise more, and your gym time has already dwindled to half a joyless hour on the treadmill per week, then consider the sage advice of coaches who say the workout you’ll stick with is one you enjoy. And who doesn’t enjoy hiking?

SLOAN CANYON 101 TRAIL

This is another trek from our popular March 2020 story, Hikes After 5, highlighting trails that are so close to town, you can hit them on your way home from work. As writer Rachel Christiansen noted, “the easy, winding nature of the path lends itself perfectly to making the journey as long or as short as you want.” And in keeping with the spirit of this issue’s feature, “Written in Stone” (p. 46), the 101 trail offers an alternative to Sloan Canyon National Conservation Area’s Petroglyph Trail, which is open to limited numbers of people — and no dogs — to protect the extensive rock writing found there.

HOW TO GET THERE: 2998 Nawghaw Poa Rd., Henderson

DISTANCE: 8.1 miles

ELEVATION GAIN: 850 feet

ANCESTRAL TERRITORY OF: Nuwuvi (Southern Paiutes) and Nüwüwü (Chemehuevi)

HISTORY LESSON: Archaeologists date the hundreds of petroglyph panels in Sloan Canyon to the Middle Archaic, Late Archaic, Puebloan, and Late Prehistoric periods, meaning it’s been occupied for thousands of years. It’s an extremely precious cultural and historical site.

STEWARDSHIP 101: As Indian Country Today said in a 2018 report on vandalism to Southern Nevada’s petroglyphs and pictographs, “with popularity comes problems.” But you can be part of the solution. Rather than hike alone to the petroglyphs, take alternative trails, such as this one. Encourage others to visit fragile sites with a guide. Stay on trails. Watch where you walk and sit. And if you do see damage being done, report it at the visitor’s center.

CHRISTOPHER SMITH

HEAR MORE: Hiking experts talk about their favorite trails on Nevada Public Radio’s State of Nevada

Innovative Education Meets Real-World Care

REGISTERED NURSE TO BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN NURSING (RN TO BSN)

Program duration: 9 months

Start date: April & September

Learning modality: 100% online

ACCELERATED BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN NURSING (BSN)

• Program duration: Less than 18 months

• Four start dates: February, June, August & October

• Location: Henderson, NV & South Jordan, UT campuses

• Learning modality: On-campus & hybrid-online options

POST-MASTER’S FAMILY NURSE PRACTITIONER (FNP) CERTIFICATE

• Program duration: 18 months

• Start date: April

Learning modality: 100% online with a 3-day on-campus residency experience at our Henderson, NV campus

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN NURSING/ FAMILY NURSE PRACTITIONER (MSN/FNP)

• Program duration: 23 months

• Start date: January & July

• Learning modality: 100% online with a 3-day on-campus residency experience at our Henderson, NV campus

EDUCATION

50 STANDOUT SCHOOLS

While health and safety protocols have become commonplace in our personal and professional environments, and terms including hybrid-learning and virtual play dates are today part of our collective lexicon, it is important to recognize the tremendous resiliency and adaptiveness demonstrated by the Vegas Valley education community during the challenges brought on by Covid-19.

Parents and teachers came together to facilitate online learning for students despite their location, and these groups collaborated to help students maintain important social connections via laptop, mobile-phone and tablet interfaces. Many of us turned to already existing websites including khanacademy.org for additional learning & teaching resources, and local organizations including Vegas PBS created new web portals for at-home learning that are still available today at vegaspbs.org/education.

Flexible learning spaces and on-demand lessons are now a complimentary piece of the learning-experience for students around the world. Schools in the Vegas Valley have adopted many elements of these virtual offerings into the daily teaching curriculum, but the importance of in-person learning remains an integral part of the student experience. Of this, we can all agree.

Included in this special Education Today section is a handpicked selection of Vegas Valley schools with programs that range from pre-k to advanced degrees. While not wholly comprehensive, this list can help narrow the Southern Nevada school choices as you navigate the options for your child or for yourself.

● ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES ACADEMY (1411 Robin Street, Las Vegas, NV 89106) is a magnet public high school serving grades 9-12. U.S. News and World Report rated ATECH as the top high school in the Las Vegas Metro and the #147 high school in the nation. A-TECH offers eight magnet CTE programs in Architectural Design, Business Management, Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Engineering, Graphic Design, Biomedical, and IT Networking. A-TECH Digital Game Development students collaborated to design and produce a 3D game in Blender and Unity to create a virtual tour of the school, which is accessible from the academy’s website.

● ● Serving pre-school through eighth grade students, the ALEXANDER DAWSON SCHOOL at Rainbow Mountain (10845 West Desert Inn Road, Las Vegas, NV 89135), an independent school located on 33-acres in the community of Summerlin, is Nevada’s first Stanford University

Challenge Success partner school for students in early childhood through grade eight. Utilizing the unique Challenge Success framework, Dawson uses research-based strategies and programs that emphasize student academics, wellbeing, and a healthy school-life balance to create more engaged, motivated, and resilient learners and leaders.

● ● ● Beginning as a small home school group, AMERICAN HERITAGE ACADEMY (2100 Olympic Ave, Henderson 89014) has grown into a Christian private school for pre-kindergarten to high school students in North Las Vegas, Las Vegas, and Henderson. The curriculum is based on the Foundation for American Christian Education (FACE) methodology. AHA differentiates itself by not having school on Mondays, teaching cursive handwriting and Latin, requiring annual community service projects, and by hosting an annual etiquette dinner for upper

grammar students. Students consistently test in the top 10% of the nation academically, and 100% of the Academy’s graduates have been accepted into college.

● ● ● Founded by native Las Vegan and tennis player Andre Agassi, ANDRE AGASSI COLLEGE PREPARATORY

ACADEMY (1201 W Lake Mead Blvd, Las Vegas, 89106) is a tuition-free public charter school for K – 12th grade scholars. In 2017, Democracy Prep, a Harlem-based network of nonprofit public charter schools, partnered with the Andre Agassi College Prep Academy. Democracy Prep’s academic program is rooted in researchproven curricula that have been shown to accelerate progress to mastery for lowincome students, including those with disabilities and English language deficits. The students attending Democracy Prep are selected by a public computer-based lottery system. Preference is given

to children living in a two-mile radius from the school. There are no entrance tests or tuition fees required for students to attend.

● Also known as Basic Academy and Basic High School, BASIC ACADEMY OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (400 Palo Verde Dr, Henderson 89015) was the first high school in Henderson and serves grades 9-12. Basic Academy is a candidate school for three International Baccalaureate programs. The Middle Years Programme (MYP) is a five-year programme that features a curriculum comprised of eight subject groups, providing a broad and balanced education for early adolescents. The IB Diploma Programme (DP) is a rigorous, college-preparation course of study that emphasizes critical analysis and communication skills across six subject areas. In the Career-Related Programme (CP), students undertake a minimum of two IB Diploma Programme (DP) courses, a core consisting of four components and a career-related study,

● Featuring programs that include Information Technology, Medical, Business and Associate of Applied Science degrees, ASHER COLLEGE (6029 W. Charleston Blvd, Las Vegas, 89146) is a vocational college and career trade school. With a mission to deliver a quality, market-driven career education, Asher provides classroom and hands-on training experiences that focus on the skills identified by an advisory board of local Las Vegas employers. To ensure its students’ success, Asher offers free tutoring and comprehensive career services assistance designed to help graduates land a position after completing their degree.

preparing them for further education, apprenticeships, or employment.

● Opened in 1954, BISHOP GORMAN CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL (5959 S Hualapai Way, Las Vegas 89148) has been serving the Las Vegas community for nearly 70 years as the oldest Catholic high school in the Diocese of Las Vegas. As a college preparatory school, Bishop Gorman has a 98% college-bound rate.

The Class of 2021 boasts 31 Scholars and 129 Honors Graduates, two National Merit Scholarship Finalists, and four National Merit Scholarship Commended Students. Students have received $25 million in scholarship offers. The Class of 2021 also had 30 seniors receive athletic scholarships to play at the college level. Fine art classes include ceramics, drawing, digital photography, guitar, orchestra, theatre, dance, and more.

● Serving grades 6-8, BROWN ACADEMY OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (307 N. Cannes St, Henderson, 89015), is an

International Baccalaureate (IB) Middle Years Programme (MYP) school and home of the Bears. The IB MYP comprises eight subject groups to create a well-rounded education that introduces students to many subject areas: Language acquisition (Spanish), Language and Literature, Individuals and Societies (history), Sciences, Mathematics, Arts, Physical and Health education, and Design. Robotics, T.V. productions with a studio, musical theater, foreign languages, award-winning fine arts, show choir, and jazz band are among the school’s unique offerings.

● Home to the Leadership and Law Preparatory Academy, a college preparatory magnet program with a four-year program in legal studies, CANYON SPRINGS HIGH SCHOOL (350 E Alexander Rd, North Las Vegas, 89032) serves students in grades 9-12. The Canyon Springs Career & Technical Education department provides a handson, skills-based curriculum that offers opportunities for students to earn College

of Southern Nevada college credits, industry-recognized certifications, and work-based learning experiences. Other majors include Cybersecurity, Forensic Science, International Studies, Landscape Design, Military Leadership, and Robotics. Through its Pioneer Pals program, potential students are partnered with an interested eighth grader to tour the school, attend classes, and get a taste of the Canyon Springs campus life.

● Specializing in healthcare education, CARRINGTON COLLEGE (5740 S Eastern Ave #140, Las Vegas, 89119) has two locations in Nevada: Reno and Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Campus is geared toward students in the medical industry and those looking for a career in criminal justice. The Las Vegas Campus boasts a 28,000-squarefoot facility with state-of-the-art classrooms and laboratories. Labs are outfitted with microscopes, anatomy models, simulation manikins, and other equipment to approximate each subject areas’ professional settings. Additionally, the campus learning resource center provides 78 computers with internet access, and an inventory of books, journals, CDs, and other media. The Las Vegas campus partners with area hospitals, facilities, and businesses to accommodate students who want hands-on clinical experience.

● CENTENNIAL HIGH SCHOOL (10200 W Centennial Pkwy, Las Vegas, 89149) is a public high school serving grades 9-12 and home of the Bulldogs. Students have received National Merit Finalist Recognitions, scholarships, and Military Academy Appointments. The school’s NJROTC Program has frequently been selected as the number one unit in the nation. BARK!, the school’s newsletter, is published by the advanced journalism students at Centennial High School, with additional contributions from Journalism I students. To prepare students for life after high school, Centennial provides information on Pathway Planning, Apprenticeships, Internships, Credentials, Military, College, Testing, and NCAA/NAIA.

● Home of the Cowboys, CHAPARRAL HIGH SCHOOL (3850 Annie Oakley Dr, Las Vegas, 89121) is a public high school serving grades 9-12. The school focuses on rigorous instruction, relevant content, meaningful relationships, and personal responsibility Along with foundational coursework, Chaparral offers Automotive Technology, CADD, Culinary Arts, Geoscience, Japanese, Mariachi, and Marketing classes. Chaparral’s athletics department offers spring, fall and winter sports, including flag football,

soccer, golf, wrestling, and more. Other activities include Billiards Club, Ceramics, Garden Club, and more.

● COLLEGE OF SOUTHERN NEVADA (csn.edu) is the largest and most ethnically diverse college in Nevada. Their priority is to deliver an affordable, collaborative, and welcoming environment that allows all students to shine. CSN is a fully accredited institution offering hundreds of degrees and certificates in 70 academic programs—with 26 degrees and certificates available entirely online. CSN is also extremely accessible with

three main campuses in Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, and Henderson, as well as multiple sites and centers throughout Southern Nevada. Outside the classroom, CSN has a variety of clubs, activities and organizations to keep students engaged and connected. CSN’s baseball team has taken home a national championship, and the Coyotes are also represented in basketball, softball, soccer and volleyball.

● CORONADO PREP PRESCHOOL (2650 Sunridge Heights Pkwy, Henderson, 89052) provides Infant Care, Toddler Care, Two’s Care and

● ●

Schools in Las Vegas, CHALLENGER SCHOOL – SUMMERLIN (9900 W Isaac Newton Way, Las Vegas, 89129) serves preschool through 8th grade students The curriculum is designed to teach children self-reliance, selfworth, honesty, rationality, integrity, justice, and productivity. The school incorporates science, speech, literature, geography, music, art, and physical education into its well-rounded academic education. Projects and events like Science Fair, Young Author, and Speech Festival span multiple grades (kindergarten–8th) and annually provide students with growth opportunities in the skills the activities promote.

One of four Challenger

● At DEL SOL ACADEMY OF THE PERFORMING ARTS (3100 E Patrick Ln, Las Vegas, 89120) magnet students in grades 9-12 have the unique opportunity to study the performing arts along with participating in athletics, visual arts, service organizations, clubs, and countless student activities. Students may pursue majors in Costume Design, Dance, Mariachi, Band, Orchestra, Vocal, Cinematic Arts/Music Production, Technical Theatre, and Theatre. Magnet students also have access to community internships, Artistin-Residence programs, and numerous performance opportunities.

Preschool for 3- to 5-year-olds. Developmental milestones in Gross and Fine Motor Skills, Language and Hearing, Social and Emotional Abilities, and Cognition, are used as progress guidelines for school professionals as well as parents. To ensure the safety of students, Coronado Prep is a nut-free facility. Coronado Prep Families can keep up

with their students’ progress through a live video monitoring system which can be accessed via cell phone or desktop computer.

● ● ● Serving K-12 students, CORAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCE

LAS VEGAS (8965 S. Eastern Ave, Ste. 280, Las

Vegas, 89123) is a tuition-free school focused on Math and Science. Technology is also integrated throughout the curriculum. CASLV has eight campuses throughout the Las Vegas valley and boasts a student/teacher ratio of 20 to 25 students per class. Students have participated in many academic competitions, winning awards at Science Olympiads, Science Fairs, statewide Science Bowls, Math Counts competitions, and

● CULINARY ACADEMY OF LAS

VEGAS (710 West Lake Mead Blvd, North Las Vegas, 89030) is the country’s leading non-profit hospitality training institute offering 15 different programs in hospitality work, digital and employability skills training, and language instruction. Students receive real-world training through applied learning sites and partners. The Westside Bistro is a student-run, full-service restaurant located on the main CALV campus. Culinary Arts

Catering and Events is a professional catering service that provides onsite banquet service at their Events Center or off-site at a venue of choice. Students complete applied learning hours throughout the duration of their program and refine skills that are directly applicable in future jobs.

Lego Robotics competitions. CASLV has been rated the #1 Elementary School and the #6 Nevada Middle School in the U.S. News and World Report 2022 Best Schools Rankings.

● Founded in 1983 in New Orleans, CRESCENT SCHOOL OF GAMING AND BARTENDING (4180 S. Sandhill Rd, Ste. B8, Las Vegas, 89122) is the largest, most comprehensive bartending and gaming school in the United States. With two locations in Las Vegas, the school offers both bartending and casino gaming courses. Crescent is an accredited school by ACCET (the Accrediting Council for Continuing Education and Training). Crescent has two bartending programs: a 3-Week Bartending Course and a 12-Week Bartending and Beverage Management Course. Crescent’s Casino Dealer Training programs include a 350-hour Two-Game Dealing Program and a 750hour Comprehensive Dealing Program. Crescent has a fulltime Placement Director at each campus.

● DESERT PINES MAGNET ACADEMY is part of Desert Pines High School (3800 Harris Ave, Las Vegas, 89110), an urban public high school serving grades 9-12. Desert Pines Magnet Academy is rated by the Magnet Schools of America as a “Magnet

School of Excellence” and a “Magnet School of Distinction”. Students can participate in competitive performance groups, such as Marine Corp JROTC, band, and theater. More than 40 extracurricular clubs and activities, including DECA, FBLA, FCCLA, HOSA, SkillsUSA, Student Council, National Honors Society, are available, and the school also has strong athletic programs, including football, basketball, track, baseball, soccer and more. Magnet program students have a 100% graduation rate, and Desert Pines High School graduates have been awarded millions of dollars in scholarships.

● EAST CAREER & TECHNICAL ACADEMY (6705 Vegas Valley Dr, Las Vegas, 89142) is a magnet high school serving grades 9-12. When applying for admission, students select their program of choice and can select coursework in Construction Technology, Culinary Arts, Early Childhood Education, Health Information Management, Information Technology, Marketing & Hospitality, Mechanical Technology, Medical Professions, Sports Medicine, and Teaching & Training. Students gain handson experience through rigorous coursework, hands-on projects, job-shadowing, and internships. Through the Tiny Titan Preschool for 3- to 5-year-olds, Junior Education Program students prepare and present lessons and take turns being the day director for the early childhood education laboratory school.

● ● FAITH LUTHERAN MIDDLE SCHOOL & HIGH SCHOOL (2015

S Hualapai Way, Las Vegas, 89117) is a private, Christian school for grades 6-12. In addition to a challenging academic curriculum, students can participate in choir, band, handbells, drama, football, hockey, volleyball, cross country, golf, cheerleading, dance, tennis, soccer, basketball, wrestling, baseball, softball, golf, track, swimming, and lacrosse. The college prep curriculum features 36 Honors and 21 Advanced Placement courses. Together, the Class of 2022 was accepted into over 200 different colleges and universities.

● “The Arts: A Way to Learn, A Way to Live, A Way to Achieve!” is the motto of GILBERT MAGNET SCHOOL FOR COMMUNICATION AND CREATIVE ARTS (2101 W Cartier

Ave, North Las Vegas, 89032), an elementary magnet school for K-5. Students learn via Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), a teaching method that improves critical thinking skills through teacher-facilitated discussions of visual images. VTS encourages participation through a group problem-solving process, using art to teach thinking, communication skills, and visual literacy.

● ● HENDERSON INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL

(1165 Sandy Ridge Ave, Henderson 89052) is a preschool – 8th grade private school. The school’s STEAM curriculum focuses not only on science, technology, engineering, and math but also on art. Every student receives instruction in reading, writing, and mathematics, and multiple times per week in science, social studies, Spanish, performing and fine arts, and physical

education. The academic disciplines are complemented by extra- and co-curricular activities, creating well-rounded students.

● HYDE PARK ACADEMY OF SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS (900 Hinson St, Las Vegas, 89107) is a STEM academy for students in grades six through eight. The program serves students who require an academically demanding and challenging curriculum in the four core content areas: mathematics, language arts, science, and social studies. Advanced Placement (AP) strategies are incorporated into the instructional methodology. Hyde Park Panthers distinguish themselves in classrooms and competitions, in the arts, on the athletics fields, and in giving to the school and community.

● ● JO MACKEY ACADEMY

OF LEADERSHIP AND GLOBAL COMMUNICATION

(2726 Englestad St, North Las Vegas, 89030) is the first K-8 magnet school in Clark County. Jo Mackey is a leadershipfocused educational community that fosters positive character through social responsibility and 21st-century skills. The school is named for Mrs. Jo Mackey, who devoted her life to the underprivileged and handicapped, being handicapped herself. Her legacy lives on through student participation in service projects at every grade level. In addition to their coursework, students can participate in Drill Team, Girls Who Code, Robotics, and the Rubik’s Cube Club.

● ● KIDDIE ACADEMY OF HENDERSON (870 Coronado Center Dr, Henderson, 89052) is an educational daycare modeled on the Life Essentials® educational philosophy. Core curriculum is delivered via learning through play, developmentally appropriate classrooms, positive guidance, science, technology, engineering, and math skills, all supplemented with Music & More, weekly 30-minute lessons filled with music and stories. The academy also created an information resource for parents with helpful tips on everything from enriching the school’s STEM program at home to introducing lifelong healthy eating and fitness habits.

● ● FOOTHILLS MONTESSORI SCHOOL (1401 Amador Ln, Henderson, 89012) serves students from three to fourteen years of age. Areas of study include math, science, geogåraphy, social studies, history, language, foreign language, music, art, and physical education, delivered in a diverse and age-appropriate manner. The Spanish immersion program offers students the opportunity to become bilingual. Students learn a second language in a natural manner through classroom conversational situations and academic instruction.

● ● ● ● KHAN ACADEMY (khanacademy.org) provides a world-class education for anyone – kindergartenthrough-8th grade, high school, college students, and adult learners – located anywhere in the world, all 100% free. Courses are delivered through an educational website with practice exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized learning dashboard, all of which empowers learners to study at their own pace in and outside of the classroom. Coursework covers math, science, computing, history, art history, economics, and more, including K-14 and test preparation (SAT, Praxis, LSAT) content.

● ● LEGACY TRADITIONAL SCHOOL (7077 W. Wigwam Ave, Las Vegas, 89113) is a tuition-free public charter school in Southwest Las Vegas. Students benefit from an accelerated pace of study, high expectations for academics and behavior, self-contained K-6 classrooms, bell-to-bell instruction, integrated Language Arts curriculum (Spalding), accelerated mathematics (Saxon), and more. Students also learn and live the principles found in the school’s Standards of Citizenship, which include citizenship, loyalty, responsibility, and service.

● A public high school serving grades 9-12, LAS VEGAS HIGH SCHOOL (6500 E Sahara Ave, Las Vegas, 89142) offers challenging academic classes, and students can participate in sports, CTE courses, the school’s performing arts program, or its AJROTC program. The school’s sports team, the Wildcats, has won numerous championships, and their athletics programs are recognized as some of the best in Nevada. Students can also join one of the 38 different clubs and organizations.

● ● ● THE MEADOWS SCHOOL (8601 Scholar Ln, Las Vegas, 89128) is a pre-k through 12th grade private school that follows the motto: In pursuit

Your Adventure

Adventures await in the following areas:

• Arts, Audio/Video Technology & Communication

• Agriculture & Natural Resources

• Automotive/Construction

• Business/ Marketing & Hospitality

• Cosmetology/Costuming/Fashion

• Culinary Arts

• Education

• Engineering/Aviation/Computer Science/Robotics

• Information Technology

• International Baccalaureate

• Law, Public Safety & Leadership

• Medical & Health Sciences

• Science, Technology, Engineering & Math

of excellence. Founded in 1984 on a 1.25 acre lot, the school moved to its current 40-acre campus in 1988. With core values focused on scholarship, character, community, inclusion, and discovery, The Meadows School accomplishes its mission to support meaningful lives for their students to thrive in a global society. 100% of the school’s graduates have been accepted into 4-year colleges and universities since its first graduating class in 1991.

● ● The NASRI ACADEMY FOR GIFTED CHILDREN (3695 S Lindell Rd, Las Vegas,89103) serves K-8 students. Understanding that gifted children have specialized social, emotional, and academic needs, the Nasri program is designed to focus on all three of these areas. The staff is knowledgeable in working with the specialized needs of gifted children. The Nasri Academy for Gifted Children Educational Philosophy is built around the

Integrated Curriculum Model (ICM), which is comprised of three main areas: Overarching Concepts, Advanced Content, and Process-Product. Other areas of study include Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Design, and Robotics.

● NEVADA CAREER INSTITUTE (3231 N Decatur Blvd #201, Las Vegas, 89130) offers affordable training programs in Medical Assisting, Surgical Technology, Medical Insurance Billing, and Massage Therapy, and more, combining classroom studies with handson training. Many programs can be completed in as little as 8 to 9 months. Flexible course schedules and the option to choose day or evening classes make it easier for students to balance school with work and family commitments.

● NEVADA STATE HIGH SCHOOL (multiple locations in Las Vegas and Henderson) is a tuition-free, public charter

school serving grades 11-12.

Juniors and seniors take legitimate college courses with genuine college professors on actual college and university campuses at this state-funded school. Courses count for both high school and college credit, making it possible for students to earn their high school diplomas while getting a jump on their college degrees.

● Emphasizing college preparation, NORTHWEST CAREER & TECHNICAL ACADEMY (8200 W Tropical Pkwy, Las Vegas, 89149) is a public magnet school serving grades 9-12. NWCTA offers students the ability to complete a Career and Technical Education (CTE) program of study, which

● One of the premier arts magnet schools in the nation, LAS VEGAS ACADEMY OF THE ARTS (315 S 7th St, Las Vegas, 89101) serves grades 9-12 and is free for students to attend. Programs available include band, vocal music, dance, guitar, mariachi, orchestra, photography, piano, studio art, technical theatre, theatre, graphic design, video production, and world jazz studies. Eighty percent of its graduating seniors enroll in a post-secondary institution, and last year, over $22 million in scholarships were awarded. The Arts Schools Network (ASN) awarded LVA Exemplary Status 2018-2023 for overall excellence and leadership in arts education. Niche.com awarded LVA an overall A grade.

allow students to learn industry standards, practice hands-on learning, and the ability to take part in internships and industry partnership opportunities. Programs consist of Biomedical Science, Construction Technology, Culinary Arts, Engineering & Design, Hospitality & Marketing, Mechanical Technology, Teacher Education, and Veterinary Science.

● PALO VERDE HIGH SCHOOL (333 Pavilion Center Dr, Las Vegas, 89144) is a comprehensive four-year high school enrolling just over 3,300 students in grades 9-12. The mission of Palo Verde is to prepare students to realize their academic, creative, emotional, physical, social, and career potential. The school combines challenging coursework, a robust athletics program, and diverse activities. The class of 2022 earned over $12.2 million in scholarships. The Speech and Debate Team is ranked #1 in the state of Nevada, and the Student Council won the National Gold Council of Excellence, Silver Star Award and Southern Star Award.

● RANCHO HIGH SCHOOL MAGNET ACADEMY (1900 Searles Ave, Las Vegas, 89101) is a “school-within-a-school” inside Rancho High School. RHS challenges students with a

● NEVADA STATE COLLEGE (1300 Nevada State Drive, Henderson, 89002) is a four-year public college offering more than 30 majors and 30 minors, including areas of study such as business, biology, psychology, education, criminal justice, and nursing. In addition, Nevada State College has developed a Master of Education program in Speech-Language Pathology. Students can learn in-class or online, or a hybrid of both, and Nevada State College offers multiple start dates throughout the year so students can begin coursework at a time that suits their schedules.

Nasri Academy noun

Nas·ri A·cad·e·my | \nas-reə -’ka-d -me\

Definition of Nasri Academy

1. solution to an overlooked, and under-served need for students especially: the only full-time education solution for gifted children in Southern Nevada

2. a private school for the advanced education and unique needs of Pre-K-8th gifted children of ALL socioeconomic backgrounds

3. a community of gifted persons organized to advance (STEAM) science, technology, engineering, arts, and math in the youth of Las Vegas

4. a body of established educators widely accepted as authoritative in the schooling of gifted children

Synonyms for Nasri Academy

Advocate for the gifted, frustration-breaker

To Learn More About Nasri Academy visit nasriacademy.com

CALL 702.896.8000 FOR INFORMATION ABOUT OUR MARCH 5 OPEN HOUSE!

wealth of Honors and Advanced Placement offerings along with specialized education in Aviation, Medicine, and Aerospace Engineering. RHS fosters student creativity and ingenuity through dynamic electives such as orchestra, theater, dance, band, choir, and art. After-school athletic programs and club activities address students’ social needs by providing a sense of community.

● ROBERT O. GIBSON MIDDLE SCHOOL

LEADERSHIP ACADEMY

(3900 W Washington Ave, Las Vegas, 89107) is a magnet school serving grades 6-8. The curriculum centers on English, Math, and Science along with encouraging students to take initiative, solve problems, work as a team, and address real community needs. Highlights include a House Rewards System, Internationally

Recognized Robotics Team, Leadership Ambassador Outreach Program, Drumline Program. The Academy has been recognized with a Magnet School of Excellence, a Spirit of Nevada Student Council Award, and a Quiet Storm Foundation Student Award, and it is an AVID Certified School.

● ROSEMAN UNIVERSITY OF HEALTH SCIENCES (11 Sunset Way, Henderson, 89014) is a private, non-profit university for undergraduate and graduate-level healthcare professionals. With campuses in Henderson and Summerlin, the University is comprised of the College of Dental Medicine, offering an Advanced Education in Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics residency, an Advanced Education in General Dentistry residency and a Doctor of Dental Medicine; the College of Pharmacy, offering a Doctor

of Pharmacy and Professional Continuing Education; the College of Nursing, offering an accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing with two learning modality options – Hybrid-Online or OnCampus, and an accelerated Master of Science in Nursing/ Family Nurse Practitioner; and the College of Graduate Studies, offering two master’s degree programs, Biomedical Sciences and Pharmaceutical Sciences. Roseman University of Health Sciences will also offer a Doctor of Medicine through its College of Medicine once it becomes accredited.

● Serving students in grades K-5, SANDY SEARLES MILLER ACADEMY OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (4851 E Lake Mead Blvd, Las Vegas, 89115) is a free, public elementary

● Home NEVADA, university UNLV degree and architecture more online subject Institute community semi-retired lifetime program and requirements and achieved by of students to one

Home of the Rebels, UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, LAS VEGAS (unlv.edu) is a public university offering more than 300 majors. UNLV also has more than 150 graduate degree programs and its own law, medicine, and dental medicine schools. From architecture to women’s studies, UNLV offers more than 200 undergraduate and graduate online or hybrid courses in a broad range of subject areas. The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute is a member-driven learning community of more than 1,800 retired and semi-retired adults. Members continue a lifetime of learning by contributing to a program rich in content, shared interests, and life experiences. There are no education requirements to participate in classes and activities. In 2022, UNLV, once again, achieved R1, or “Very High Research” status the Carnegie Classification of Institutions Higher Education. One third of UNLV students are the first in their families to go college, and Military Times listed UNLV as one of its Best for Vets.

● ● ● THE ADELSON EDUCATIONAL CAMPUS (9700 Hillpointe Rd, Las Vegas, 89134) is the only PK-12 Jewish community school in Nevada. The campus consists of two schools: The Preschool/Lower School for students from 18 months through 5th grade and the Upper School for grades 6–12. AEC strives to develop students into caring, perceptive, engaged thinkers, who are fully prepared for top universities at home and abroad. Unique to AEC is their Startup Incubator, a state-of-the-art technology lab While courses are built on Jewish values of civil discourse, empathy, discussion-based explorations of ideas, and imagination, families of all faiths are welcome.

magnet school named for a former Las Vegas teacher who later became a Nevada first lady. The school offers the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme with a focus on Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM). Educators, families, and students collaborate to cultivate a community of inquiring, open-minded, and reflective global citizens.

● SHENKER ACADEMY

(9001 Hillpointe Rd, Las Vegas, 89134) is a nationally accredited private preschool. Core programs include a comprehensive academic curriculum in language

arts, mathematics, science, technology, and art.

Coursework centers on Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM), music, American Sign Language, Spanish, Hebrew, sports, and insights from an array of subjects and programs. The academy embraces 21stcentury learning methods and objectives with a focus on critical thinking, collaboration, and communication skills in each grade.

● Home of the Mountain Lions, SIERRA VISTA HIGH SCHOOL (8100 W Robindale Rd, Las Vegas, 89113) is a public high school serving grades 9-12.

It is one of the most ethnically diverse high schools in the valley. The curriculum and student life are based around the principles of Fortitude, Attitude, Integrity, and Respect. The Mountain Lion Messenger, the school’s student-run news website, provides a snapshot of life at SVHS and the issues concerning the student body. In 2021, Sierra Vista High’s senior kicker Macy Beck made history by kicking inside of Allegiant Stadium, becoming the first female athlete to play in the NFL arena.

● TOURO UNIVERSITY

NEVADA (874 American Pacific Drive, Henderson, 89014) is a non-profit university focused on healthcare and education. Founded on the Judaic values of social justice, intellectual pursuit, and service to humanity, Touro offers programs in Education, Medical Health Sciences, Nursing, Occupational Therapy, Osteopathic Medicine, Physical Therapy, Physician Assistant Studies, and Research. Since 2014, the Mobile Healthcare Clinic run by the School of Physician Assistant Studies has given free acute care on a

weekly basis for underserved Vegas Valley populations.

● TRAPEZE LAS VEGAS

(121 E Sunset Rd, Las Vegas, 89119) provides top-notch instruction for locals and visitors in all circus arts, including the high-flying trapeze. Training on a wide variety of aerial arts apparatus takes place in an Outdoor Circus Lot with lots of fresh air and space. Other unique activities offered include the Wheel of Death, Bungee Trapeze, and more. Recreational training in all circus arts, special events, and a camp for kids of all ages are held at this location.

● VALLEY HIGH SCHOOL (2839 Burnham Ave, Las Vegas, 89169) is a public high school, serving grades 9-12, that offers three award-winning magnet programs: The Academy of Hospitality and Tourism, the International Baccalaureate with advanced coursework in arts and world languages, and the Military Science (Army JROTC), Cyber Technology, and Emergency Management program. VHS also offers the Valley Viking Scholars program and a variety of co-curricular

We believe in both.

Education isn't an either/or situation at the UNLV/CSUN Preschool in the Lynn Bennett Early Childhood Education Center. We offer caring, NAEYC-accredited early childhood education to our youngest Rebels so parents like Jessica can balance their studies, jobs, and other family commitments.

By working together, we're building a brighter future for our community.

Learn more about Jessica, her daughter, Zuri-Anahi, and our preschool expansion project at unlv.edu/preschool/.

activities such as Ballet Folklórico, Choir, Mariachi, Student Council, and various clubs.

● Home of the Bulldogs, VARIETY SCHOOL (2800 Stewart Ave, Las Vegas, 89101) serves special needs students in grades 6-12. A Sensory Room space provides individuals with sensory issues the opportunity to regulate their body’s reactions to external stimuli and develop coping skills for these experiences through a variety of Sensory activities. The school features vocational training centers for a laundry, a kitchen and restaurant, a recycling center, a graphics center, and a greenhouse. Students spend time in each area, learning a skill of their choice, with a goal of preparing them for the workforce. As part of the Graphic Arts program, the school presented Paints and Palettes, an art exhibition of students with Autism.

● A public high school serving grades 9-12, VETERANS TRIBUTE CAREER AND TECHNICAL ACADEMY (2531 Vegas Dr, Las Vegas, 89106) prepares students for careers in public service. Magnet programs include Criminal Justice/Pre-Law, Emergency Medical Services, 911 Dispatch, Law Enforcement, Forensic Science, and Cybersecurity. Veterans Tribute

● TOURO UNIVERSITY

NEVADA (874 American Pacific Drive, Henderson, 89014) is a non-profit university focused on healthcare and education. Founded on the Judaic values of social justice, intellectual pursuit, and service to humanity, Touro offers programs in Education, Medical Health Sciences, Nursing, Occupational Therapy, Osteopathic Medicine, Physical Therapy, Physician Assistant Studies, and Research. Since 2014, the Mobile Healthcare Clinic run by the School of Physician Assistant Studies has given free acute care on a weekly basis for underserved Vegas Valley populations.

CTA has partnerships with Las Vegas Metro Police Department and other public agencies that offer students experiences designed to give them an advantage over other applicants for public service jobs, while still academically preparing them to apply to college, and creating broader ranges of options for their future. Having instructors in law enforcement, emergency medical response, dispatch careers, criminal justice field, crime scene analyst and cybercrimes provides students with firsthand knowledge and training.

● WGU NEVADA (wgu.edu), which is part of Western Governors University, is an accredited online university offering bachelor’s and master’s degrees for busy adults. Areas of study include Business, Education, Healthcare, and IT. Degree programs start at the first of every month, all year long, so there’s no need for students to wait for spring or fall semester. WGU graduates are employed at top companies and organizations such as Amazon, Cedars-Sinai, Google, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, the Mayo Clinic, and the United Nations. Students see an average salary increase of over $18,00 just 2 years after graduation..