Reno Recap - Erich

 

So, yes, I acknowledge that there was a six-year hiatus in the blog. And it is very fair to say, why? What happened in that period? So, in that same spirit of fairness, let me give you a quick overview of six years in one blog post. (How is that for compression?)

While we were still traveling around the world, we started to talk about to where we might want to come back when we returned to the U.S. We each took a map of the continental U.S. with the state borders drawn in. And everyone then colored their map. You could color an entire state one color or break a state up into different parts and color each part a different color.

Green meant “Yeah, seems like a cool place to live.” Yellow meant “Not exactly eager, but this place would be fine.” Red meant “Uh, no.” Then I compiled a map with the average of everyone’s individual maps. The greener a region, the more everyone valued it as a great place to be. The redder, the more everyone valued it as a great place to avoid. And the state of Nevada: entirely red.

Note that none of us had ever been to Nevada before. SIDEBAR – that’s a bit untrue. When I was seven, my family went, by plane, to California and then back to Iowa (where we lived.) One of those two ways, we had a layover in Las Vegas Airport. I remember this because there were slot machines only a couple feet away from the waiting area by the gates. And my mother was going to teach my brother and me a lesson about gambling. She pulled out a few quarters (they still took quarters in that time) and started plunking them in and pulling the titular one arm of the bandit. On the third or fourth pull, she won. Several more quarters came pouring out of the bandit’s mouth. But to prove her point, she then proceeded to feed in all those quarters until they were no more. The lesson, I suppose, was gambling is a losing game. But I thought maybe there was an alternative lesson. Once the quarters come out, stop! You got lucky, say hooray, and move on. Having said this, or written this, I am not a gambler myself, so maybe I did learn the intended lesson. (Or I learned enough about probability theory in my training as a mathematician to recognize a negative expected value. Didn’t that sound mathy?)

BACK TO THE MAINBAR – None of us had seen Nevada, but we all assumed it was a big desert with little but sand, wind, and casinos. (And airports with casinos in them.) So if it rated so poorly, why did you go there? (I’m speaking as the reader now, or I would have written “why did we go there”.)

Carver was accepted into a program for profoundly gifted children called the Davidson Institute. They promised that he would be able to continue academically at his own pace, and when he was beyond their curriculum, they would let him enroll in classes at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). That’s what led us to living in Reno.

The irony is that we moved there for Carver, and he had the worst experience that first year. The Davidson Institute did not let him move at his own pace. They slowed him down. And then when he finished Multivariable Calculus, they said they would not let him take further math classes at UNR. Given that we had moved there for this program, that was pretty crummy (to say it in nice terms.)

However, the rest of us did well in Reno. It is not a desert, but a rather beautiful city in a valley within the Sierra Nevada mountains. We took Carver out of the Davidson Institute and put in him the Washoe County School District. He went to the Gifted and Talented Institute at Hug High School and things improved dramatically. Plus, they gave us no trouble about taking UNR classes.

Now allow me to present a recap of six years, person by person:

Syarra had a great experience in middle school and then went to the Gifted and Talented Institute at Hug High School. She took a lot of advanced classes including several at Truckee Meadows Community College. In fact, she took enough credits that in her senior year, she only needed one more English class to graduate with the Honors Diploma. I will get to her senior year in a moment. But also on the academic side, Syarra participated in Science Bowl and Academic Olympics. In fact, her Academic Olympics team won first place in Northern Nevada. Syarra was part of an engineering team that built a pumpkin chucker (catapult) and a robot for competitions. She was part of a team that won the National History Day competition at the regional level and she got to travel to Washington, D.C. to represent Nevada in the national competition. The team’s historical presentation was on Disney’s Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

A pumpkin display created by Syarra and Erich
Not the pumpkins chucked by the chucker

 

Syarra was very active in Girl Scouts, becoming a student board member for the district and representing the district as a delegate at the national convention. She interned at the Northern Nevada International Center. She earned her biliteracy degree in Spanish.

Back to that senior year, Syarra studied abroad through the U.S. State Department’s Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange Study program (YES). Syarra lived in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina for ten months where she learned Bosnian, attended an International Baccalaureate school, joined Toastmasters, and competed in Model UN, winning best delegate at one of the competitions and being the runner-up for best delegate at two others. She returned to Reno just in time for graduation at the top of her Hug High class. And now she is on her way to Syracuse University.

Carver, as I mentioned, did spend one school year at the Davidson Institute, but then moved on to better things. He decided he wanted to finish high school and college early. He was allowed to take many classes at UNR while still in high school and graduated in two years. (He did graduate in 2020, which meant his graduation was virtual.) He then continued at UNR. Thanks to all the credits he had already earned, he finished in three years with two majors (physics and applied mathematics) and one minor (linguistics.)

Carver also did Academic Olympics and his team also won first place in Northern Nevada. (This was in a different year than when Syarra’s team won.) Carver founded the science bowl team at Hug High School. And at UNR, he won a computer programming competition. While at UNR, Carver also had a successful trivia team, an active D&D group, and was a member of the Society of Physics Students. In his last year, he became the Secretary for that organization.

As a college graduate, Carver can assure you
that mustard packets are not spoons.

 

Alrica took a position as the Director of Editorial and Production for the University of Nevada Press. There she fostered many books through the process of publication, and even had a couple get a starred reviews in Publishers Weekly. (To any non-publishers who happen to read this blog, that’s a biggie.)

In December 2019, Alrica left that position to found her own publishing company: Keystone Canyon Press (https://keystonecanyon.com/) Had she known the pandemic would begin three months later, she wouldn’t have started the business at that time. It was rough for a young publishing company, and then with the supply chain issues, there was much frustration. Still, in spite of this, Keystone Canyon published some amazing books. There was a series called Fields of Silver and Gold which covered history of the western United States for children at a middle school level. There was a series of detective novels, the Ratio Holmes series, for upper elementary school kids. (The author – Horatio Holmes – that’s a pseudonym for another author, one whose writing you are reading right now.) There was a very successful picture book for the newest readers that was about the importance of dark skies and nighttime for animals. There were books for adults too. Alrica really wanted to publish books about things that mattered, things that have a positive impact on the world.

Alrica was also active in Girl Scouts, leading the troop, but also engaged with the Service Unit. There she helped plan and run events. (She also spent a lot of hours at cookie booths in inhospitable temperatures. As did Syarra. Don’t worry, both survived.)

You see snakes here, sometimes.

 

Erich (now going to write in third person) works for Johns Hopkins University. He teaches in their online mathematics department and also for their Center for Talented Youth. He teaches higher level mathematics courses for advanced students. During the pandemic, he also started teaching some courses for UNR. It was virtual the first year and in person after that.

Outside of work, Erich got very active with the theater community in Reno, especially with the Reno Little Theater. He introduced the 24 Hour Plays to Reno, produced a virtual show during the pandemic, and produced some live theater when live theater was allowed. In addition, he acted in, assistant directed for, and stage-managed various productions in Reno. Plus he wrote two long plays: Two Wrongs and FU Aristotle. He made a lot of friends in that community. The hardest part of leaving Reno is leaving them.

24 Hour Plays - get moving!

 

Along with one of those theatrical friends, Erich started a podcast called Namely (https://namelypodcast.podbean.com/). Each episode explores the history of a name or a group of related names, but with a cartoonish and comical take. Chicken Pox, Dr Pepper, Days of the Week, and others in all kinds of topics.

Obviously, there are many details being glossed over or even left out. But consider this the executive summary or the nearly executed summary.

(Back to first person.) Leaving Nevada, I believe that were we all to color the blank U.S. map again, the Reno area would be a field of green. (Let me have my illusions.)