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T.R. Witcher

Story Archive

  • Environment

    Thursday, May 28, 2009

    In tough times, you’d think the proposed development of a new mine on the outskirts of town might be a plus. Yet, the “outskirts of town” have been swallowed by the city. Which is why residents of Henderson are fighting a proposed mine near I-15 at Sloan.

  • Literature

    Thursday, May 28, 2009

    The powerhouse literary journal Granta kicks off its 30th anniversary with its latest issue, showcasing fiction by established masters and up-and-coming young writers.

  • Economy

    Thursday, May 21, 2009

    Architects across the state are trying to stay afloat. No one's building - not offices, not hotels, not condos.

  • Theatre

    Thursday, May 14, 2009

    What was it like cross-examining your friend, legendary American lawyer William Jennings Bryan, during the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925?

  • Government

    Thursday, May 7, 2009

    Back in march, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid lent his voice trying to urge a resolution to financial woes at MGM Mirage, which were threatening to sink its flagship CityCenter project.

  • Literature

    Thursday, May 7, 2009

    Playing a Vulcan can be a real head trip: It was enough to lead the most famous Vulcan, Leonard Nimoy, to title his first autobiography I Am Not Spock, and to title his second I Am Spock.

  • Entertainment

    Thursday, May 7, 2009

    This is a story about fear. Not fear of the economy. Not fear of death. But fear of the unknown, the uncertain. Alvin Tam calls this the oh shit moment.

  • Film

    Thursday, April 23, 2009

    Los Angeles. Early ’80s. Vacuous, rich and pretty blond boys and girls get drunk, get high and get laid; a few come to a vague realization that their lives are, um, vacuous.

  • Taxes

    Thursday, April 16, 2009

    There was more than an air of cry-baby defensiveness a few weeks ago at the G20 Summit in London, when Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg, accused the U.S. of harboring tax havens

  • Art

    Thursday, April 16, 2009

    We don’t think much about architecture in the Valley, because, frankly, outside of the Strip, there’s not much to talk about. The latest master-planned community, no matter how nice, is, as a design issue, a rote matter, as are the shopping plazas that fill in the gaps of the city’s fabric.

  • Literature

    Thursday, April 2, 2009

    Local lawyer and writer Franklin Levy has figured out a way to combine literary muscle and good design.

  • Art

    Thursday, March 26, 2009

    Here’s the good news. One: The federal government’s economic stimulus bill, the $789 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, includes $50 million in funding for the arts, administered through the National Endowment for the Arts. And two: It’s happening fast.

  • Culture

    Thursday, March 19, 2009

    While Artistic Director James Canfield and the ballerinas are calm and focused, outside, it’s a different story

  • Entertainment

    Thursday, March 19, 2009

    On came a young MC to briefly throttle the joint to attention. She was decked in black pants, a red top, a black vest, a red truckers cap perched high above a camouflage bandana, neither of which could corral her long black hair.

  • Development

    Wednesday, March 18, 2009

    Even in the midst of an economic downturn, there are always plans in the Las Vegas Valley for new homes. And in Henderson, those plans are not small—or easy.

  • Economy

    Thursday, March 5, 2009

    “This is Jane with Credit Contact at 866-213-7580. I’m calling about your high credit-card balances." I get these damn calls all the time.

  • Art

    Thursday, March 5, 2009

    Apart from the staff of the Weekly, which came to tour through the Las Vegas Art Museum last Thursday, there were not many other visitors. The few I found were from out of town.

  • Film

    Thursday, Feb. 26, 2009

    While you were watching the Oscars, Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail was the No. 1 movie in America, pulling in $41 million at the box office over the weekend.

  • Crime

    Thursday, Feb. 26, 2009

    There are two ironies about the city of Las Vegas’ Downtown Beautification Office, which sends people with parking tickets, DUIs and domestic-violence offenses on to the streets of downtown Las Vegas to clean them up, in lieu of fines or jail time.

  • Development

    Thursday, Feb. 19, 2009

    We tend not to see the built environment, though it’s all around us, and of all the arts forms, architecture is the one that tends to have the most tangible impacts.

  • The Strip

    Thursday, Feb. 19, 2009

    First things first: the Washington, D.C.-based architect Nir Buras hates modern architecture. Second: He wants to remake Las Vegas' most famous street. Completely.

  • Nevada

    Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009

    Nevada State Prison in Carson City, which dates back to the 19th century, is the oldest prison in the state, and one of the oldest in the country. But its long history may be over.

  • Congress

    Thursday, Feb. 5, 2009

    A politician’s life is necessarily a dance between praise and criticism, between the handshakes that build consensus and make nice PR and the stinging words that establish differences—and also make nice PR. And so it goes for Steven Horsford, the first African-American to hold the post of State Senate majority leader.

  • History

    Thursday, Jan. 29, 2009

    When the city of Las Vegas celebrated its 100th anniversary a few years ago, Mark Hall-Patton, administrator of the Clark County Museum, knew that his institution would have to rise to the challenge—because the county’s centennial is this year.

  • Culture

    Thursday, Jan. 29, 2009

    At the north end of the Springs Preserve, construction crews are wrapping up work on the large new Nevada State Museum—the state’s most ambitious museum.

  • Culture

    Thursday, Jan. 22, 2009

    Forbes, last month, has gone and named North Las Vegas and Henderson two of America’s 10 most boring cities.

  • Literature

    Thursday, Jan. 22, 2009

    At a time like this, when the bubble has burst on Las Vegas’ collective psyche, it’s nice to recall the good old days of sun and fun and money, when a writer could say of the city, without irony, “It is the most incredible oasis the world has ever known.”

  • Henderson

    Thursday, Jan. 15, 2009

    It’s safe to say there’s not a lot of street art on the streets of Henderson. But in John Martone's online gallery, vegasstreetart.com, which he operates out of his home in, of all places, Henderson, there's plenty.

  • Real Estate

    Thursday, Jan. 8, 2009

    There is construction at Inspirada, the massive master-planned community in the southern reaches of Henderson, tucked behind the Henderson Airport, but most of the land on the 2,000-acre site is vacant dirt,

  • Poverty

    Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2008

    On a chilly Christmas Eve morning, Julie Murray, the CEO of Three Square Food Bank, and her staff were on the job well before 8 a.m., readying their giant warehouse for its daily ritual.

  • Development

    Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2008

    Admittedly, it feels like a sign of the economic times, when the Culinary Union, the 55,000-member collective of hospitality workers, decides to pick a fight with City Hall.

  • Encore

    Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2008

    There is, quite literally, no surface of this building, no wall, no ceiling, no floor, no pillar that has not been touched with woodwork or mosaic tile or glass or Kyoto-pleated wall coverings, or design touches like a 27-foot crystal-and-glass dragon, or hand-applied Swarovski crystal butterflies.

  • Music

    Thursday, Dec. 18, 2008

    This Christmas, play more jazz.

  • Art

    Thursday, Dec. 11, 2008

    It’s often two steps forward and one step back in the Vegas cultural community. It may seem that art has taken a step back, but UNLV’s Department of Art is trying to push forward with the announcement of plans to create an arts advisory board by next spring.

  • Music

    Thursday, Dec. 11, 2008

    We’re talking Nat Cole singing about chestnuts roasting on an open fire, or a symphony galloping through “Sleigh Ride.” And this week the place to get your fill of yuletide tunes is with the Las Vegas Philharmonic’s Christmas Pops show.

  • 2008 Presidential Election

    Thursday, Dec. 4, 2008

    Clearly, the Republicans got some kind of beat-down—losing the White House, seats in Congress and control of the Nevada Legislature—although the extent of the drubbing is still open for debate.

  • Film

    Thursday, Dec. 4, 2008

    In actor Townsend’s directorial debut, a team of well-coordinated, nonviolent protestors take the 1999 World Trade Organization summit in Seattle by storm, outfoxing the local police and spurring them to violent means to restore order.

  • Education

    Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008

    A few weeks ago, Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons—who heretofore has opposed even a whiff of a tax increase, even when facing a tsunami of financial turmoil—floated the idea of taking a pay cut to help the state weather a $300 million deficit.

  • Fashion

    Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008

    The key has something to do with obscurity—flaunting your command of segments of popular culture that only the hyper-clued-in know about or remember. But it’s not as simple as, say, showing off your rare 1970s-era repress of a Dirty Harry shirt.

  • Environment

    Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008

    Nevada is lucky enough to have a renewable energy standard that mandates that 20 percent of our energy must be met by renewables by 2015. Nevada is seeking only about 1 percent of its total energy from solar power. One percent. In a state where the sun shines so often a rainy day is cause for celebration.

  • Entertainment

    Thursday, Nov. 13, 2008

    The Vegas Valley Book Festival, which wrapped up last week, can be understood as the community’s attempt to find a place for itself on the high-culture map.

  • Development

    Thursday, Nov. 13, 2008

    With a floundering economy and a post-election feeling that the country may be ready for a more sustainable society, the planning and design philosophy known as New Urbanism, which aims to combat the excesses of suburban sprawl, may be poised to enter the American mainstream.

  • 2008 Presidential Election

    Thursday, Nov. 6, 2008

    If 2000 felt vaguely hopeful—pre-9/11, budget surplus—and 2004 at least had the housing boom to take our minds off the unsettling feeling that Iraq might not go as easily as we’d hoped, the aftermath of 2008 is just chockablock with trouble.

  • Water

    Thursday, Nov. 6, 2008

    Water from Lake Mead turned up in a surprising place: several Walmart stores in the Bay Area.

  • Music

    Thursday, Nov. 6, 2008

    Trumpeter James Barela was looking for material that he could “play a thousand times, a million times, and it still feels as fresh as the first time I played it.”

  • Film

    Thursday, Nov. 6, 2008

    It’s that smile, those lusty teeth, somehow coy and seductive, warm and haughty. It’s a lush “I don’t give a damn” smile.

  • Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008

    The black family members came from stage left. The white family members came from stage right. …that a man who looks like Obama…a man who looks like me…is monumental. It’s so monumental that words like monumental are small and somehow petty.

  • Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008

    It’s tough to be an English teacher on Election Night. What was I thinking? To lecture on writing arguments—to a class trying to argue me out of even having class?

  • Budget

    Thursday, Oct. 30, 2008

    Metro may be seeking as many as 400 officers a year over the next nine years. The question is not only whether we need all that protection, but also whether the money will be there to pay for it.

  • Budget

    Thursday, Oct. 30, 2008

    Adventurer Steve Fossett’s downed plane was found October 1, 2008, in the mountains west of Mammoth Lakes, California.