A recognizable face

One of the promotions for the Appeal was to place my smiling face (and that of Barry Smith and Karl Horeis) on cards mounted below the Appeal's news racks.

Being on display has been a little disconcerting, but it isn't like I've had strangers come up to me on the street. I've heard from quite a few people who already know me. One of the best things was when we took our friend's son, 4-year-old Nick, to the store.

"Who's that, Nick?" I asked, pointing at the card.

I could see his eyes searching for what I was pointing at, and then paydirt.

"Kurt!" he exclaimed.

I'm definitely sending one of the cards to my mom, probably without the black marker dental work.

I've heard from Rebecca Goldenberg, who wrote an occasional column from Morocco, where she was with the Peace Corps.

Rebecca is out of the Peace Corps and is working with refugees for the United Nations in Tanzania.

"While I'm officially a United Nations officer, my project is with Olympic Aid, a branch off of the International Olympic Committee's division for humanitarian assistance. The guiding objective of the program is to enhance healthy child development by delivering sport and play programs to children living in situations of disadvantage."

The refugees Rebecca is working with are from the Congo and Burundi, which both have experienced long and bloody civil wars.

Her mom says she says still receives postcards from a Carson City man.

"Nevada Ghost Towns & Mining Camps" author Stan Paher dropped by Nevada Magazine last week on his way to a talk about Nevada's oldest town at the Northern Nevada Railway Museum.

Stan believes Genoa is Nevada's first white settlement and he said Wednesday he's got a line on someone living in what was to become Mormon Station the same time all those miners were spotted in Dayton.

"Everyone focuses on Col. John Reese, but he doesn't have anything to do with it," Stan said Wednesday.

Genoa and Dayton both claim the honor of being Nevada's first settlement. While Genoa was clearly a town first, Dayton's case is that miners were seen working in Gold Canyon before anyone was living in Genoa.

I've found that if I go out and spend $40 on candles and lanterns, the power will be back on by the time I get home.

It's worked nearly every time for me, and last Saturday was no exception. In our corner of Dayton, the power went out at 1:30 p.m. and came back on six hours later, just as I was paying the store clerk for the lamps.

A lot of people weren't so lucky. My wife's mother, Joyce Hollister, and husband Gim were dark for 24 hours in Genoa. In a lot of places, electricity is still at a premium a week later.

Times like these remind me that we are on the frontier, living along the edge of a hostile land. If not for fuel and electricity, many of us would be faced with a hard choice about where we live.

Kurt Hildebrand is former managing editor of the Nevada Appeal. Reach him at 887-2430, ext. 402 or e-mail him at kurt@tahoe.com