Desert Companion

Desert Companion Desert Companion examines and celebrates our city’s distinct culture and soul.

09/24/2026

I worry a lot. I’ve had therapy; apparently, it’s some sort of hypervigilance thing. But after plenty of time in the chair, I concluded that my amygdala simply has no off switch — What was your first childhood memory? etc. has yet to produce meaningful change. I’ve always had a ridiculously chaotic mind and a sleepless fight-or-flight response. Other than that, I’ve enjoyed pretty good health.

And so, here in midlife, when I started having new aches and pains and not infrequent bouts of unprompted crying comorbid with the 2024 election, I — like any good hypochondriac — turned with complete confidence to Artificial Intelligence.

With the frequent aid of generative AI, I not only discovered that I am about to die from innumerable terrifying health conditions, but, concurrently, I figure I’m now about three-quarters of the way to achieving a Medical Doctor degree.

It began when I retrieved my lab reports from a portal, because it’s next to impossible to get an appointment with my primary certified nursing assistant in this city, with its massive lack of accessible, qualified healthcare. All kinds of lab numbers that should be green were red, meaning out of range, meaning holy s**t, meaning I grabbed my phone and began asking my friend, confidante, and always-available doctor what it all meant.

That’s the advancement that makes generative AI so great. No longer do I have to Google my health concerns and then wade through endless peer-reviewed papers to compare and contrast and deduce — i.e., think. Now the generative part of AI does all of that for me, and with a ridiculously kind bedside manner that makes me want to lay my head on its shoulder.

✍️ Stacy J. Willis
🎨 Kyle Smart
🔗 Read the full story in Desert Companion's newest issue available now, or visit: https://tinyurl.com/ew94t65p

If you’re looking for a tourist experience on the Loneliest Road in America, don’t rely on Nevada in Our Teeth: Crossing...
09/23/2026

If you’re looking for a tourist experience on the Loneliest Road in America, don’t rely on Nevada in Our Teeth: Crossing Highway 50, a slim new travelogue in verse by Las Vegas poets Jennifer Battisti and Andrew Romanelli.

Sure, you could deduce from its pages a few points of visitor interest in the cow counties — Lehman Caves sounds groovy, as does the Churchill Arts Council gallery in Fallon, and the Drugstore Museum in McGill, “a relic that stuns us with humanity,” Battisti writes — but the authors aren’t after the guidebook clarity that the looky-loos among you might want.

Remember, they’re poets. So Nevada in Our Teeth concerns itself with spirit of place, the gestalt of travel, the shifting meaning of “loneliness” 40 years after Life magazine handed the highway its perfect marketing slogan. Funded by a grant from the Nevada Arts Council, Battisti and Romanelli traveled to, from, and along Highway 50, searching for the stuff poets look for: essences and inspirations, eternity and ephemerality, connections and disruptions, memory prompts, feeling prompts, writing prompts.

Much of which they found, in varying proportions. The book’s contrapuntal structure sees the two trading poems, Battisti often supplying blocks of lyrically intense prose poetry, both riffing on what they encounter.

✍️ Scott Dickensheets
🔗 Read the full article in Desert Companion's newest issue, available now, or visit: https://tinyurl.com/ypkbwmhk

Isaac Ariail Reed isn’t your ordinary parachute intellectual. A sociology prof at the University of Virginia, he’s fasci...
09/21/2026

Isaac Ariail Reed isn’t your ordinary parachute intellectual. A sociology prof at the University of Virginia, he’s fascinated by Las Vegas — he’s writing at least one book about it. But unlike many with the Vegas bug, he visits frequently, has interviewed dozens of culture-shapers, and was delighted that his essay in The Hedgehog Review last fall generated local pushback. “I come from the Jewish dinner table school of conversation,” Reed says. “I tend to thrive on back-and-forth.”

🔗 Hear the full 24-minute conversation with Desert Companion editor-at-large Scott Dickensheets in the newest issue, or visit: https://tinyurl.com/mrxa3762
✍️ Scott Dickensheets
📸 Ronda Churchill

09/14/2026

We asked writer Melissa Gill about some of the standouts and close picks from her piece, “Summer Art Crawl,” in the newest issue of Desert Companion!

Perry Porter’s “The Renaissance Man” is currently on exhibit at the West Las Vegas Library through September 22.

About 80 diverse exhibitions rotate annually through its 12 branches, from Centennial Hills to East Las Vegas. As summer fades into fall, instead of lying low at home waiting for the heat to wane, try your nearest library!

🔗 Read the full story in Desert Companion’s newest issue, available now, or visit: https://tinyurl.com/2ua3t4zr

In the early 2000s I worked in the office of a large car dealership in Las Vegas. It was not a moral place.One afternoon...
09/10/2026

In the early 2000s I worked in the office of a large car dealership in Las Vegas. It was not a moral place.

One afternoon a woman stormed onto the lot, screaming, “I want my $50!” while one of the sales managers hid in his office because he had apparently forgotten to pay her for a bl***ob. Eventually another manager slipped her the money to quiet things down, and the day went back to normal.

Another time the dealership brought in Miss N**e America — a real title, it seemed — to sign autographs next to trucks in the fleet department. A woman who worked there was furious, but nobody in charge seemed bothered. Mostly the place ran on ci******es and shortcuts.

My job was called stripping: Every deal that came through landed on my desk. I stripped the packet down to the essentials — loan information, title verification, payoff amounts for trade-ins — making sure everything lined up before the paperwork went forward.

When you do that long enough, you start to see the difference between what a deal is supposed to look like and what it actually is. Sometimes I would see a sales manager hold a signed document against the window, press another sheet of paper over it, and trace the customer’s signature. By the time the deal packet reached my desk, it sometimes included warranties the buyer probably didn’t know they had purchased, usually at impressive prices.

It was that kind of place.

That’s why I remember what happened on September 11, 2001.

✍️ Tonya Snyder
🎨 Jennifer Tapias Derch
🔗 Read the full story in Desert Companion's newest issue available now, or visit https://tinyurl.com/2h3bkn9m

09/03/2026

Art fosters connections, especially in established community hubs — like a neighborhood library. Galleries have long been among the free cultural and educational services offered by the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District.

About 80 diverse exhibitions rotate annually through its 12 branches, from Centennial Hills to East Las Vegas. As summer fades into fall, instead of lying low at home waiting for the heat to wane, try your nearest library.

We spoke with writer Melissa Gill about her crawl through some of the works that live in our local libraries!

🔗 Read the full story in Desert Companion's newest issue, available now, or visit: https://tinyurl.com/ye2cszhw

If you had encountered Rodolfo Fernandez during his 1980s and ’90s heyday in Las Vegas, you would not have been surprise...
09/01/2026

If you had encountered Rodolfo Fernandez during his 1980s and ’90s heyday in Las Vegas, you would not have been surprised to learn he was a conductor. He looked the part: “He had the most magnificent head of hair. Legendary,” says French horn player Beth Lano. “With that hair and the mustache, he cut quite the figure in his concert attire.” His was a face destined to be framed by arms moving in fluid, precise musical notation.

In addition to being a talented cellist himself, Fernandez, who died in April, for decades conducted the Nevada Chamber Symphony — previously the Serenata Chamber Orchestra — which essentially served as the house ensemble of the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District before branching out as a nonprofit. He was 94, a leading figure from a heady time in Las Vegas culture, when the valley was building stunning new libraries, KNPR was recently underway, the city had an arts council, and more.

Fernandez was, by all accounts — and in contrast to the popular stereotype of overbearing orchestra leaders in movies like Tár — distinctly nontyrannical.

✍️ Scott Dickensheets
🔗 Read the full story in Desert Companion's newest issue, available now, or visit: https://tinyurl.com/yc3awz89

It’s around 11 a.m. on an already blistering late spring day. The heat radiates off the pavement as a three-SUV caravan ...
08/26/2026

It’s around 11 a.m. on an already blistering late spring day. The heat radiates off the pavement as a three-SUV caravan travels down a busy main drag in East Las Vegas.

It isn’t long before a man, who looks to be in his 30s, appears through the windshield on the side of the road. He looks to have slumped over unnaturally, mid-bicycle pedal stroke. He stands eerily bent in the settling dust, frozen and unaware of the cars whizzing by him.

One of the SUVs pulls over immediately. Snacks, water bottles, and a box of Narcan are pushed into the slack arms of the man, who’s slowly becoming more upright and alert.

There’s a four-person medical team in today’s caravan, with community health advocates and registered nurses. They ask the man if he needs help. He says no.

There’s nothing those in the caravan can do. They pull back onto the road.

The caravan is a partnership between HELP of Southern Nevada and the Southern Nevada Health District (SNHD). Since its launch last fall, SNHD’s Street Medicine Team has joined HELP’s Homeless Response Team several days a week, administering primary care services, writing prescriptions and helping patients pick them up, and providing specialist referrals. Their unofficial motto is meeting people where they are.

✍️ Anne Davis
📸 Rick Arevalo
🔗 Read the full feature in Desert Companion's newest issue, available now, or visit: https://tinyurl.com/3m7r83kz

If the 2000s were the Cosmopolitan, and the 2010s were the Moscow Mule, then the 2020s are the decade of the Espresso Ma...
08/20/2026

If the 2000s were the Cosmopolitan, and the 2010s were the Moscow Mule, then the 2020s are the decade of the Espresso Martini. Combining the buzzes of alcohol and caffeine, the drink’s popularity has skyrocketed over the past several years.

“In some form, the pairing of coffee and spirits dates back more than a century,” says Drew D’Errico, director of w**e and spirits at Resorts World. “At their core, espresso martinis bring together two universally loved elements: exceptional coffee and quality spirits.”

The classic espresso martini combines vodka and espresso with liqueur, but the idea lends itself to infinite variations. The base could be rum, mezcal, tequila, or bourbon; the liqueur, flavored with coffee, espresso, vanilla, caramel, or amaretto.

Jonah Gibbs, beverage director for Bar Boheme and Petite Boheme, notes that coffee has always been a solid cocktail component. “Stirred drinks like old fashioned and Manhattan variations take to coffee really well.” So, mix it up!

✍️ Lissa Townsend Rodgers
🔗 See the full roundup in Desert Companion's newest issue, available now, or visit: https://tinyurl.com/2fe8kdbd

08/19/2026

Assistant editor and KNPR health reporter Anne Davis went on a ride-along with the Southern Nevada Health District's (SNHD) Street Medicine Team.⁠
⁠
The caravan is a partnership between HELP of Southern Nevada and SNHD. Since its launch last fall, SNHD’s Street Medicine Team has joined HELP’s Homeless Response Team several days a week, administering primary care services, writing prescriptions and helping patients pick them up, and providing specialist referrals. Their unofficial motto is meeting people where they are.⁠
⁠
We asked Davis about her takeaways and the process of developing the story.
⁠
🔗 Read the full feature in Desert Companion's newest issue, available now, or find it here: https://tinyurl.com/3m7r83kz
⁠
📸🎬: Rick Arevalo (Nevada Public Radio)

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