Never Ending Fires and Covid 4.0 at UNR
Above, an eerie photo by graduate student reporter Richard Bednarski who spent this summer helping the RGJ with their coverage of local fires and smoke. He returned to Our Town Reno this week in our podcast detailing how it’s been to cover this horrible season of flames and poor air quality, going back to his hometown areas, how he’s kept himself safe, and why he’s set on now becoming a climate change journalist.
National forests are closing, the Dixie fire to the northwest of us is still barely one third contained, and the Caldor fire to the south hasn’t been contained at all, meaning these past few days of blue skies in Reno might quickly come to an end.
Covid 4.0 at UNR (after Spring 2020 abruptly went to Zoom, Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 went online and hybrid) is going masked in person, without a requirement for students to be vaccinated, even though they will be packed in cramped labs and lecture halls, and there was a faculty petition trying to get the vaccine obligation or regular tests for all on campus amid the still surging Delta variant. Emails are already pouring in before the start of classes Monday with students saying they are Covid positive. Reporting protocols are unclear to many faculty but videos are being sent on how to deal with students refusing to be masked or having forgotten their mask. Professors are starting to revive Zoom links while bemoaning the renewed possibility of black screens or students in their pajamas checking multiple screens during class time. How this all shakes down remains to be seen, with all hoping hospitalizations and deaths can be avoided in the campus population despite this in person return with just masks as the mandated protection for students.
Amid this apocalypse a new (spoof?) religion is taking hold in Reno as we wrote about this week. We also asked if Reno still has a payday loan problem despite state level legislative efforts. Our most commented post across social media, including on our Instagram, was about a local Taco Bell with signs indicating an early closure due to staff shortages while simultaneously advertising low paying jobs. On Facebook, Jeff DePaoli had a good point: “All the folks who used to say, “fast food jobs are supposed to be for high school kids,” are big mad now that those places are closed during the day when high school kids are at school.”
A less divisive story was this minidoc video above by Jayme Souza on the Nevada Woodchucks endeavor. One organizer pointed out they would welcome new and younger members to learn about woodcraft and help make their beautiful wooden toys for local kids in need.